tilly_wizard's reviews
209 reviews

I have the same complaints about presentation as for the first book, however this one has the etymology and meanings of some of the proper nouns in the pronunciation guide, which is great.  Unfortunately I was unable to maintain this optimism about the actual narrative. 

Generally every aspect of this book (plot, characters and setting) is more original than Book 1, due to no longer being so tightly shackled to the inspirational source material of AtLA and ACOTAR (and to a lesser extent, ASOIAF and Shadow and Bone). 

The idea of this book is great - dead or missing mothers are one of the most ubiquitous tropes in fantasy, and it's quite rare for the mother to be given any sort of complex characterisation or history. Particularly in the case of male heroes, the dead/absent mother is usually written as an archetypal, perfectly idealised goddess-figure for the hero to mourn and/or avenge. The mother's suffering at the hands of Men might also be used as the motivation for the hero to declare himself a feminist in a traditionally chauvinist culture (or more transparently, as an excuse to allow author to write the love interest as a feminist, thus making him dreamy). 

In the first book, our hero Kell was modeled after Zuko (yay) and Rhysand (boo, hiss), both of whom had mothers who were sacrificed by the writers at the altar of male protagonist man-pain.  I only made it 2 books into ACOTAR, but I remember thinking in the second book that Rhysand's mother was given an unusual amount of attention in the Illyrian backstory infodump and I expected to hear more about her experiences later in the story, but I am told this doesn't happen. Zuko's mother is believed to be dead until about halfway through the final season, and after she is revealed to be (possibly) alive, nothing more comes of it and this revelation doesn't have any strong influence on Zuko's characterisation in any subsequent episode (we do not acknowledge the AtLA comics in this house). 

So this idea of writing a full-length sequel/prequel where the former protagonist's absent mother is the main character is neat. Moreover, Annick is a Bad Mother who hates her eldest son for reminding her of his evil father.

Unfortunately, however, writing believable ancient immortal non-human characters (let alone in first person POV) is very difficult to do, and so 900 year old faerie queen Annick might have been an overly ambitious protagonist for a relatively inexperienced author (Annick is convincingly neither ancient nor inhuman), but Elizabeth did at least succeed in making Annick's narrative voice more mature and worldly than Rosalie's was.

The setting is also beginning to feel very artificial (like a backdrop for a play rather than a fully realised world), as we are two books in and we have learned very, very little about the lives, cultures and beliefs of the common people who inhabit these kingdoms - all of the main characters are royals or royal guards/spies/advisors, and the action rarely strays outside the walls of various castles and palaces. 

Bizarrely, in this novel which is backstory about Kell's conception, the "romance" feels very out of place. "Romance" is in scare quotes because it isn't, really - Annick has lustful sex with the king while she is still grieving the deaths of her former lovers, and then we are told that they are falling in love (and of course they are mates, which is a concept that is given far less explanation and plot-relevance than it is in the SJM-verse, and makes no sense because the king is a human), but they have had hardly any on-page interactions by the time they are “in love”, and most of those interactions are in council meetings. The romance really suffered from not being explored through both POVs, and by the end of the book, I still couldn’t identify any of King Henry’s distinguishing character traits other than his bedroom preferences, which I would prefer to know far less about. Probably the worst indictment I can give this book is that I was not even slightly bothered when Henry died at the end, because I didn't believe in the "love story" in the first place, and now book 3 can (hopefully) have an actually interesting plot about actually interesting characters. 

I was prompted to reread this after all this time thanks to the release of Vault of the Undying - I don’t recall any stories which were set in the Godsfell Woods of Lemish, but this is set in the Darkwoods, which is the closest thing. 

I absolutely adore these early, apocryphal Dragonlance novels, and this is one of the best. Michael Williams continues to build his own mythology of the Solamnic Knights and the Brightblade lineage, strongly inspired by Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnelle, intercut with a subplot about an elf prince who has been transformed into a giant spider by an evil mage. The twist of this particular story -

that the elf prince began as a spider, transformed into a prince as part of the mage’s scheme to win an elf maid’s hand in marriage, since he will never win her love

- I suspect is also an adaptation of a traditional folktale which I can’t quite recall. The legendary Germanic craftsman Wayland Smith also makes his way into Krynn, along with various bits and pieces of Celtic lore, such as the druidic tree alphabet. 

The main theme is along the same lines as the original tale of Gawain’s encounter with the Green Knight - the conflict between ideal codes of chivalry and human limitations (Gawain’s desire to preserve his life causes him to commit his single moral failing) - which is conveyed through the refrain that to the last, there is always choice. The framing story (the tale is being narrated by Sturm to Caramon and Raistlin), as well as one of Sturm’s mystic visions, emphasises the bond between Sturm and Caramon/Raistlin, and the heroic destinies of Sturm and Raistlin - each becoming the ultimate exemplar of the Solamnic Orders and the Orders of High Sorcery, respectively, after making the choice of self-sacrifice.  The foregone tragedies of Sturm and Raistlin are contrasted with the most touching and hopeful scene in the novel -

when the enchanted spider-turned-elf Cyren is laid to rest, the sign of Mishakal appears in the sky, suggesting that due to his experience of true love, his soul has been blessed and allowed passage into celestial paradise.

Sturm and Raistlin are far less antagonistic here than W&H generally depict them, and I suspect that as Williams had been part of the Dragonlance project since the beginning, when the development of story and characters was more collaborative, the characterisations here were modeled on that original conception, where Raistlin was still generally regarded as a friend by all (albeit difficult to get along with), and his genuine love for his brother, support of his friends and defense of the downtrodden were considered equally important aspects of his character, alongside his ambitions. 

Williams’ vision of the land of Lemish is wild and dark and primeval - he invents an encounter with a treant which is totally different to any other depiction of such in Dragonlance before or after - and mysteries of other parts of Ansalon are raised but ultimately left unresolved (Angriff Brightblade experienced some kind of divine enlightenment in Estwilde; the evil wizard Calotte remains undefeated deep in the forests of Silvanost) supplying DMs with adventure hooks which can be used to be ensnare even those campaigners who have read the novel and are already privy to the secrets of Vertumnus. 

Williams also provides a complex and fascinating bardic magic system where the powers of the gods can be invoked by sacred musical modes, which is a worthy addition to any Krynnish campaign, especially since the sourcebooks have rarely treated the bard as a viable class option in Krynn. 

Curiously, this book goes out of its way to take a side on D&D’s perennial “baby orc goblin dilemma”, with a gruesome massacre of a goblin village being used as one of several incidents which demonstrates the Solamnic Orders’ fall from grace.

As always with these early books, there are a few digressions from what is generally accepted as being “canon” - aside from the main issue of the whole novel later being overwritten by The Soulforge, the Earth calendar is used rather than the Solamnic calendar, and there is also a brief mention of a female draconian.

The content warning at the start of this book is so fucking perfomative lmao. My "international" edition is printed in my country, but all the helpline numbers are still the American ones. I know it would take actual effort for the publisher to change the numbers for different countries, but they should have just deleted them instead of giving us all another reminder that the USA is the only country that matters, in this book which has anti-colonialist themes. 

I didn’t reduce the score for this, because it almost certainly isn’t the author’s fault, but it didn’t exactly put me in a good mood to start reading. 

According to the author's note, the book (presumably the first draft) was written in four weeks, which did not surprise me. 

This book started out promising - a village is attacked by monsters and 

Isolde is unwillingly transformed into a werewolf aufhocker.

 

Unfortunately, it struggles to maintain this momentum, and most of the first half consists of Adrian saying and doing things that offend Isolde, Isolde being miserable about it and making Adrian miserable until he apologises. Meanwhile, the secondary cast navigates assorted romantic mishaps, none of which are very engaging because these characters didn't have enough page time or pathos in the previous book to endear them to the reader. In the second half, SSC keeps adding more layers of gratuitous melodrama

(Ana was raped! Yesenia was raped! Yesenia was pregnant when she died!)

and every time I cared less because it felt like she was trying too hard.

 The universal complaint about this book which I agree with is that there is far too much word count eaten up by sex scenes. The first book felt like it had just the right number, but this book has at least twice as many, and most of them contribute nothing (except to assure us that Isolde is still hot for Adrian despite all these fights they keep having). The writing in these scenes feels mechanical and repetitive, which makes their great love feel very shallow. I'm too gay to understand these books that go on and on about how Men are the root of all evil, and yet still devote the majority of the pagecount to the heroine’s true love/lust for a man.

In the author’s note, SSC also admits to not really "knowing" any of the underdeveloped secondary cast from the first book, and so during the writing of this book she decided that they all had gruesomely tragic backstories (of course) and also

several of them are traitors.

She says “I think the hard part is trying to decide if you are really against anyone because they all have their motives - but that’s the interesting part of being morally grey, and in a lot of ways, I hope you struggle to decide.”

Which, I did not. She expects me to believe that these people have been ride-or-die besties with Adrian for 200 years while Yesenia/Isolde was dead,

but Isolde is the only one who loves him enough to want to save him from being mind controlled by the evil goddess?

Come the fuck on. 

Presumably the theme of the book is supposed to be “transformation”:

-  Adrian is transforming into a really monstrous vampire due to being mind-controlled by Dis;

- Other characters undergo various physical transformations (vampires shapeshifting into animals; amputation; change of hair colour) and/or are revealed as traitors (transformed from allies to enemies);

- The graphic design has a butterfly motif (which is not depicted in the text at all, for some reason)

This is a substantial list, and the presence of any theme at all is something of an improvement, because there was no particular theme in the first book which stood out to me (apart from the general heroine’s journey/spiritual awakening/self-knowledge mumblings which are the bread-and-butter of YA/NA fantasy/romance), but I don’t feel that these ideas were ever used to communicate anything applicable or meaningful beyond the surface level. 

The one aspect of this book which I do think is really emotionally poignant is Isolde’s connection with her mother’s homeland, but there isn’t enough of it. The situation in Nalini has been firmly in the background for these two books, and I hope that’s going to be the main setting for the third one. I also want to hear more about Aroth (Yesenia’s homeland), because this ancient matriarchal utopia of witches which was conquered by men sounds very Robert Graves, and it’s always funny to me how ubiquitous his wildly unhistorical ideas are in modern fantasy books with delusions of making serious points about feminism and colonisation. 

 The author is basically marketing this on TikTok as Zutara fanfic, and...not really? The king has fire powers and the queen has water powers (and darkness powers, and dragon riding powers lmao), but that's about where the similarities end. I'm not exactly sure what the author thinks are the reasons for the long-enduring appeal of Zutara, but I am pretty sure she doesn't have the same ideas about it as I do. 

ACOTAR is the other primary inspiration, and considering how much I despise that series, I don’t have much commentary to offer. ACOTAR itself was so palely derivative of 80s fantasy classics that, by the time that these storylines and characters inspired by ACOTAR have been diluted down into this new generation of books (generally in abridged form, as most authors are unwilling or unable to replicate Maas’ overinflated wordcounts), they leave a very faint impression - like a carbon copy of a carbon copy. 

The aspect of this book that brought this to mind for me was the fact that Kell (our Zuko/Rhysand analogue) has in his circle of friends and advisors a woman who is, apparently, an ancient goddess. The full extent of her powers remains a mystery, and her primary function in this book is to occasionally dispense exposition and hints about the mysteries of past events (particularly with regard to Kell’s missing relatives). This character unfortunately has even less presence than Amren in ACOTAR, who is, in turn, a pathetic imitation of Sethra Lavode from Steven Brust’s Dragaera. 

Regardless of its weaknesses when compared to the source material, romance between royals from enemy kingdoms with opposing elemental powers is an eternal winner of a storyline.  

It's the kind of silliness that you can only get from self-published books (and the absolute trashiest fantasy romance imprints). There's dragons and faeries and witches. Iconic lines and character bits from other stories are shamelessly recycled. Characters' emotions and beliefs pivot on a dime. The cast is squarely divided into 'friends' and 'villains'; all the 'friends' are good and supportive of the main characters, and all the villains are cartoonishly evil. 

This is pretty unremarkable, inoffensive self-indulgent nonsense, but I still liked it, and it will never stop being hilarious to me that it's the BadWrong shippers who are always writing novels. 

Docked an entire star for awful grammar, creepy AI art., and the terrible formatting of the map in the paperback.  

 Yes, yessss, this was just the kind of self-indulgent nonsense I like. The only way it could have been better is if it was gay.

I have seen a decent amount of criticism leveling the accusation that this book is all smut with no plot, but I don't think that's accurate. The ratio of smutty events vs non-smutty events is fairly low, but I suspect it feels higher to a lot of people because the plot is so predictable that you can skim through it at breakneck speed.

The whole plot about the witch hunts of hundreds of years ago,

Isolde being the reincarnation of one of the witches who was Adrian's true love

, etc etc is telegraphed so hard that there is no mystery whatsoever even the first time around, and therefore I somewhat strangely found this horror-fantasy book about vampires and witch hunts to be a rather comforting reading experience.