Hello everyone!
It's definitely all about the title of the book. The author has so much fame attached to her through her A Court of Thorns and Roses series, that it's difficult to really pull our minds away from the topic and cover something else.
But we're doing exactly that tonight!
See, I randomly ran into an ARC in one of the emails BookSirens sent me that I thought might be a book I'd love.
And I did enjoy it, up to a point.
There were some minor issues with it, but overall I'd say it at the very least hooked me so that I'm intrigued as to what comes next.
I shouldn't prattle anymore and instead just give you the review, right? We're talking Court of Tricksters tonight.
Links to previously related posts can be found at the bottom of the page.
This is because I've already read and reviewed some S. L. Prater books, and honestly? I definitely like the whole, witch universe she has going on. It's unique and I don't think I've run into anything like it in my reading yet.
Court of Tricksters is a separate entry into this universe that tells the story of witch Rain, who was apparently once a Seelie warrior that almost died, but swore away part of her soul to bind it to a demon (Bernard) and this not only saved her, but made her a witch, too.
Side note: I freaking love Bernard. I don't know if it's because he usually assumes a cat form or what, but his sarcasm and dead-pan puns being perfectly serious just make me grin.
She's kinda-sorta been courting with this man for a little bit, and the man turns out to be none other than the Duke of Night, the ruler of their entire province.
Now, the Seelie and Unseelie kingdoms have a past of wars between them (one in which Rain apparently fought in, based on the snippets we learn and she guesses), and the Lunar kingdom was neutral grounds between them ... until their King was killed and they became a simple Dukedom in response once his nephew assumed the throne (there's a whole other kerfuffle with the Seelie Queen taking control of Night's mind and having him kill his uncle, but we'll leave that one to the side).
Background, done.
Rain and Night have kind of been at this dance for a while, but he's known from the moment he met her that she's his true mate and might help him in the escalating pressures from both Seelie and Unseelie about finding himself a bride from one of their own lines, so that they can gain control over his mages.
See, Lunar mages? They're the most powerful in the land. Night himself is one of the few who can 'whisper death' to anyone and anything, making him pretty much unstoppable.
And he wants Rain.
And Rain wants nothing to do with that so she runs and hides, which eventually leads him to kidnap her, though she escapes out of his home despite the fact it's otherwise both Fae and witch-proof. Her hangup?
He doesn't believe in love, and apparently she can't survive without love in a marriage.
However, both of them can feel the pull of the mating bond, and Night's actually already set the date for their engagement party to appease the other two kingdoms and keep them at bay for a while longer (and the way Rain moons about it when she first hears it is rather amusing). They act on what the bond wants, feeding each other, washing each other, that sort of thing, but they don't actually have sex yet because Night wants Rain to get used to him first.
So this goes back and forth a little bit, while Rain worries about three human women at a brothel in town and how she might take care of them better (spoiler alert: if you married the duke, Rain, that would literally be easier than rain, pun intended); then things come to a head when the Unseelie king casually just sends giants down through the borders, and said giants attack the town.
Rain brings one of them down on her own, while Night shows up to whisper death to the rest of them, but unfortunately, one of the girls dies in the attack, so Rain takes her to an ancient oak in the woods for burial. This will be important later, because she becomes one with the oak, and after nearly freezing to death and being rescued by Night, she's got one more deadly experience in front of her.
She's attacked by a blood mage and the Unseelie king's deadliest and most loyal soldiers. In actuality, these guys originally worked with a Fae trickster who Rain tricked into changing into a rat so that Bernard could kill him, but their real purpose is something else entirely.
Well, they end up fatally stabbing Rain, and Bernard can't leave her to go find Night because if he does, she'll definitely die, and he'd much rather die with her, if he has to.
This is where the book ends, but Rain has an uncanny ability to get back up again after being pushed down, plus she sent a plea for help through the girl who she buried under the oak, so I'm guessing the tree's going to connect to the tree in Night's home and get him over to her quick as can be!
I'll admit that at first glance, this seems like a mash-up of Celaena and Rhysand from Maas, but then again, we're all of us inspired by something or other, and the fantasy genre is littered with influences left, right and center.
So I'm not going to talk about that.
I generally enjoy S. L. Prater's books and have read at least two or three of them by this point, so I knew the kind of writing style I was getting myself into and the fact that I'd probably enjoy the story up to a point. What I wasn't expecting was that I didn't enjoy the heroine as much as I enjoyed them in the previous books I'd read.
Rain is ... I don't exactly know what it was that stops me from praising her, unless of course it's that she comes across as a bit of a Mary Sue. Not in that direct, obnoxious way, but there's clearly SOMETHING mysterious about her past that's important for us to know, and considering she gets spelled by probably one of the most (if not THE most) powerful Lunar mages yet somehow not only resists, but he doesn't even know she resisted ... yeah, that's OP heroine, right off the bat.
But I could have dealt with that. I had other issues with her, most importantly how she was so incredibly worried and worrying over her human friends in the brothel, yet refused to take the step to actively protect them.
Yes, of course it was fine while she was around and could go into town and whatnot, but the fact of the matter is she was trying to hold back a torrent with two hands. While Night's proposal might not have been the romance she seemed to adore out of fairy tales (and also, who in their right mind, at the ripe old impossible age as her, even still pines for those?) it WOULD have positioned her in a spot from which she'd be able to really DO something. Do that MORE that she was constantly worrying she couldn't otherwise.
For someone so hell-bent on this love thing, she sure as heck couldn't see it right in front of her eyes. Night doesn't need her to convince him to fall in love - he needs her to tell him he's already there, the stoopid. The book might have ended on 3 stars for me if not for her final twist when she's like okay, you know what? I can do this and I'll work out the kinks along the way.
Night as an okay character, though I might have had much less patience with Rain as he did, but I don't pretend to be under the influence of a mating bond either. I WILL say I love the way Fae are described in this one though, with antlers and animal wings and ears and tails. It's a pretty interesting concept, all things considered.
And while I knew we were getting a cliffhanger ending, I was still left wanting something ... more. The book does a good job at introducing us to Rain and Night and the fact they're obviously going to mate in the near future and bring rightness and law back to all the land (probably uniting the Seelie and Unseelie courts between them, honestly), not to mention setting up some great intrigue with what Night did and what's in his past, but nothing REALLY happens. Sure there's an attack - and then an attack on Rain. But that's the last 15% of the book.
There's nothing else, although you get the feeling the author's building up towards a revelation of some sort. Something, anything, would have gone a long way, IMO. Bernard and the others and even Rain deciding, hey, she's got an unconventional family that she loves, is cute and all, but with the build-up of what might lead to a pretty huge conflict, having nothing to counter-balance that is a bit jarring and I could see some readers being dissatisfied with that.
Even just a tiny sliver of revelation about Rain, something from the past she can't remember, would have worked wonders.
So overall, this is a solid read, 3 stars, elevated to 4 because Rain decides to work with Night rather than against him, and I might be into this world-building enough that I'll pick up the sequel once it releases. I'd really love to see some revelations somewhere along the road though, and hopefully soon? We'll see!
So I'm not going to talk about that.
I generally enjoy S. L. Prater's books and have read at least two or three of them by this point, so I knew the kind of writing style I was getting myself into and the fact that I'd probably enjoy the story up to a point. What I wasn't expecting was that I didn't enjoy the heroine as much as I enjoyed them in the previous books I'd read.
Rain is ... I don't exactly know what it was that stops me from praising her, unless of course it's that she comes across as a bit of a Mary Sue. Not in that direct, obnoxious way, but there's clearly SOMETHING mysterious about her past that's important for us to know, and considering she gets spelled by probably one of the most (if not THE most) powerful Lunar mages yet somehow not only resists, but he doesn't even know she resisted ... yeah, that's OP heroine, right off the bat.
But I could have dealt with that. I had other issues with her, most importantly how she was so incredibly worried and worrying over her human friends in the brothel, yet refused to take the step to actively protect them.
Yes, of course it was fine while she was around and could go into town and whatnot, but the fact of the matter is she was trying to hold back a torrent with two hands. While Night's proposal might not have been the romance she seemed to adore out of fairy tales (and also, who in their right mind, at the ripe old impossible age as her, even still pines for those?) it WOULD have positioned her in a spot from which she'd be able to really DO something. Do that MORE that she was constantly worrying she couldn't otherwise.
For someone so hell-bent on this love thing, she sure as heck couldn't see it right in front of her eyes. Night doesn't need her to convince him to fall in love - he needs her to tell him he's already there, the stoopid. The book might have ended on 3 stars for me if not for her final twist when she's like okay, you know what? I can do this and I'll work out the kinks along the way.
Night as an okay character, though I might have had much less patience with Rain as he did, but I don't pretend to be under the influence of a mating bond either. I WILL say I love the way Fae are described in this one though, with antlers and animal wings and ears and tails. It's a pretty interesting concept, all things considered.
And while I knew we were getting a cliffhanger ending, I was still left wanting something ... more. The book does a good job at introducing us to Rain and Night and the fact they're obviously going to mate in the near future and bring rightness and law back to all the land (probably uniting the Seelie and Unseelie courts between them, honestly), not to mention setting up some great intrigue with what Night did and what's in his past, but nothing REALLY happens. Sure there's an attack - and then an attack on Rain. But that's the last 15% of the book.
There's nothing else, although you get the feeling the author's building up towards a revelation of some sort. Something, anything, would have gone a long way, IMO. Bernard and the others and even Rain deciding, hey, she's got an unconventional family that she loves, is cute and all, but with the build-up of what might lead to a pretty huge conflict, having nothing to counter-balance that is a bit jarring and I could see some readers being dissatisfied with that.
Even just a tiny sliver of revelation about Rain, something from the past she can't remember, would have worked wonders.
So overall, this is a solid read, 3 stars, elevated to 4 because Rain decides to work with Night rather than against him, and I might be into this world-building enough that I'll pick up the sequel once it releases. I'd really love to see some revelations somewhere along the road though, and hopefully soon? We'll see!
xx
*image not mine
No comments:
Post a Comment