You know that cartoon trope with children dressing up as adults and it’s obvious to everyone that they’re children, but the kids themselves think they’re so slick? That’s what Lexie Janson’s debut novel feels like.
The book follows the story of Mayu (royalty), Aaron (army general, also Mayu’s protector/childhood friend), and Enzo (assassin, also Mayu’s protector), as they must face the many dangers that come their way, political, physical, and magical.
Being the first book in a new fantasy series, the world building is a big focus here and it’s pretty solid, I found the multiple religions, cultures, and traditions that the people in the kingdoms of Logarain and Thurait to be well thought out. The story itself is also interesting and engaging, with a good flow that made it easy to jump into and go along for the ride.
That being said, there were a couple of things that just weren’t for me – while there is magic in this world, nothing about it is explained, we’re just told when magic is being used, but have no idea on how it works. Being a huge fan of hard magic systems this was kind of off-putting, but since the book does a good job of not making such a big deal of magic users, I accepted it as part of the narrative.
That brings me to my next point, there’s a lot of telling instead of showing, we have a lot of dialogue focusing on explaining to us what is going on through dialogue, it kind of felt like being in a classroom at times because of the amount of exposition going on. This might be one of my biggest gripes about the book, it felt like it was looking down on me sometimes, with all these info dumps, almost like it’s telling me “didn’t you know?”. Same thing with all the things it doesn’t outright tell us, like how the magic system works. It feels like it’s keeping this great, big secret that only makes me wonder if the payoff will be as big as the narrative makes it out to be.
I also believe the book has a hard time in having a consistent tone throughout. The world building is rich and makes you feel in your typical high fantasy™ setting we all know and love, only for the dialogue to be more modern in tone and style, which really took me out of my immersion more than once. There was also a lot of whispering, like, a lot, to the point where it felt a little unnecessary at times.
Now let’s talk romance. A lot is unexplained regarding the romance, characters constantly remind us how much they love each other, but we don’t know why, we just have to take their word for it right from the get-go, which makes connecting with this narrative hard, since there’s a lot of trust that the reader will just accept these intense emotions from the characters with no evidence or anything to show for it.
I do see the potential this series has. For all the things I’ve been nit-picky about, the world-building was solid, the story entertaining without feeling clichéd, and the unanswered questions did leave me wanting to know more. With just some small tweaks to the dialogue and a little less exposition, this series would really make huge jumps in the right direction.
Ultimately, I think the book was just OK, it’s not really my cup of tea, but if you’re looking for a darker narrative that acts as a bridge between YA and adult fantasy, I think you’ll have a great time with it.
Thanks to NetGalley and Koehler Books for the ARC in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.
Rating
⭐⭐☆☆☆