Master of Crows - Grace Draven

The theme read for the Unapologetic Romance Readers for July was a fantasy romance, so I put forward Master of Crows primarily because it was recommended for people who liked Uprooted.  I loved that book, so this was an easy nomination for me.  I didn't actually realize it was by Grace Draven, one of whose books (Radiance) we read before, until someone pointed it out.  But it still got a pretty good number of votes, and so off we went.

The story follows Martise, an apprentice magician who can't actually use magic and who is enslaved to one of the highest magicians in the land.  She's placed with Silhara, a dark magician known as the titular Master of Crows, when he requests help finding a way to kill a god.  Martise is valuable because of her ability to read ancient languages, but she's also supposed to spy on Silhara, who's an enemy of the Conclave, and find proof of heresy so that the Conclave can, uhm, dispose of him.  Silhara, in the meantime, has requested assistance even though he knows said assistant will be a spy because he's plagued by the god Corruption, who wants to possess him and enslave the world.

So.  I wanted to read this book because of how it was recommended for those who liked Uprooted.  How did it stand up?  Hm... Well, I didn't like it quite as much as Uprooted.  That book has an enchanting, fairy tale-like quality to it, despite some of its contents being quite terrible.  Master of Crows didn't have that same vibe, though.  It was darker and not as whimsical-feeling, maybe because the "enemy" was more concrete than the Wood was.  It's also much slower than Uprooted is.  Still, I quite liked the central romance here.  Silhara can be a real jerk at times but I think he did redeem himself, and the Dragon of Uprooted was a real bastard in his own ways, too.  The romance itself is a slow burn, with a bit of instant attraction but a real relationship blooming over the course of time and both parties reluctant to relate their feelings because of their respective positions.  The romance is definitely more prominent here than it was in Uprooted, as well, which is something I liked and really what had me picking this up--you say it's like Uprooted but with more romance?  Yes, please, I say!  I also liked the world that Draven built up; the religious aspect of magic, the idea of killing gods, and the different cultures that she incorporated all struck good notes with  me.

What I didn't like was how this set up some promises that weren't really followed through.  For example, Silhara was supposed to a mysterious, dark magician, one of the most dangerous ever--and while yes, he's very powerful, he's really not dark and spends most of his time tending his orange orchard.  If you're going to have a dark hero, I feel like you need to fully commit to him, rather than just brushing all of it off as just rumors.  Also, I'd hoped to see a bit more emotional turmoil on Martise's part.  She decides in pretty quick order that she can't betray Silhara, because she loves him, and there's really no waffling on this issue.  Considering that the nature of her enslavement is that a member of the Conclave owns a piece of her soul, I think this would have been a bit harder of a decision to make, love or no love.

Still, I did quite like this book.  I didn't like it as much as Uprooted, which was one of the most magical books I've read recently, but I liked it significantly more than Radiance, the other Draven book I'd read.  I was excited to see this had sequels, and disappointed when I figured out they weren't true sequels but instead short stories, which just don't appeal to me in the same way.  Sigh.  Maybe some day.

4 stars out of 5.

Radiance - Grace Draven (Wraith Kings #1)

This was our the latest theme read for the Unapologetic Romance Readers group on Goodreads.  Every so often (roughly once a month, but often times with a bigger gap depending on how lazy we are) the group has a "theme read" alongside the monthly read, to give people who aren't interested in one a chance to read the other.  Radiance was the winner out of a group of nominations for a "slow burn" read.  I'll admit, I was a little disappointed going into it, because I was really rooting for Mariana Zapata's latest--because she is the queen of the slow burn--but I gamely stepped up.

Well, this wasn't quite my cup of tea, and I have to say that I don't see that it was a slow burn, either.  At all.  The story is about Idilko, a human princess, and Brishen, a Kai prince.  Kai are kind of like dark elves but with claws and fangs.  The two are married as part of an alliance between their two countries, since both of them are of the royal line but aren't actually in line to inherit.  But despite having never met each other and being essentially repulsed by each others' appearances in the beginning, the two are lovey-dovey pretty much right away.  They're always calling each other "wife" and "husband" as terms of affection, they're sleeping with each other (literally sleeping) right away on the road and pretty soon after they get to Brishen's home, they're holding hands and giving each other little signs of physical affection.  And then they suddenly decide they're physically attracted to each other and to do the dirty.  There's really no "burn" here at all--it's basically all there to begin with.  There's a little bit of apprehension and a good deal of culture shock to get over, but nothing that is ever seriously presented as a real obstacle to Brishen and Idilko being together.

The characters themselves are fine.  I really liked both Idilko and Brishen, who both had good backgrounds and personalities of their own.  The side characters were very promising, too, from Brishen's female warrior cousin to the neighboring lord-across-the-border who has a good relationship with Brishen despite their countries being at odds.  Draven also does a good job building up the culture of the Kai realm.  They're a nocturnal race, and a race with magic, in comparison to humans who have none; they have a basis of trade and a court that's functional but absolutely vicious at the same time.  The contrasts between human Idilko and Kai Brishen are extremely apparent, and I think that really helps put the reader in Idilko's frame of mind as she struggles to adapt to her new surroundings and her new people.  BUT.  This book was supposed to be a romance, and I didn't get that at all.

There's another little side-plot going on here, with someone trying to kill Brishen and/or Idilko, and then something else with Brishen's mother being a royal and potentially homicidal bitch, that may or may not be connected to the central murder plot.  Including the epilogue, this is pretty clearly a setup for future books that will deal more with political machinations and international relations than with building the relationships between the characters, which was the focus of this book.  It seems like a strange combination, but maybe there will be another relationship built up in the second book.

Overall, I like the characters, and the writing and world-building are decent, but the book didn't ring as romance at all to me, and since that's what the description, cover, etc. all clearly indicated it was, I was definitely disappointed.

2 stars out of 5.