Elspeth Spindle, a young, fiery-tempered, average height for a Romantasy heroine, striking beauty with a complicated familial history, lives in the eerie, mist-locked kingdom of Blunders (no, I don’t understand that name either.) Cursed with the magical infection that’s going around, she relies on the monster that has been living in her head ever since she touched a Tarot card her uncle owns. (Yes, in this land, magic comes to only certain people through Tarot cards. Other magic, natural-based magic that you get somehow, gets you killed, or shoved into the mist to die. This mist is caused by the Spirit of the Woods and is evil, like the Spirit and the magic, but not the Tarot cards, which were created by the Spirit of the Woods. Confused yet? You ain’t read nothing yet.)
Elspeth calls the monster the Nightmare, an ancient mercurial spirit locked in her head. He protects her and keeps her secrets; but everything comes with a price, especially magic. (One of the largest costs? The Nightmare speaks almost entirely in rhymes; this gets real old, real fast. But then again, a lot in the book does.)
When Elspeth meets two mysterious highwaymen on the forest road, her life takes a drastic turn. Thrust into a world of shadow and deception, she joins a dangerous quest to cure the kingdom of the dark magic infecting it, except one of the highwayman just so happens to be the King’s own nephew, Captain of the Destriers…and guilty of high treason. (The other is one of the King’s sons, but he is not as important to Elspeth as the nephew, who is tall, grey-eyed, and brooding; so now you know who the MMC is here.)
Ravyn (the Captain) and Elspeth have until Solstice to gather twelve Providence Cards—the keys to the cure. (The legend says they need to gather all the cards. Or maybe only twelve. Who knows? Whatever works for the plot at the moment.) But as the stakes heighten (of course they do) and their undeniable attraction intensifies (of course it does), Elspeth is forced to face her darkest secret yet: the Nightmare is slowly, darkly, taking over her mind. (Instead of quickly, brightly, taking over her mind, I guess. It’s Music of the Night, only bad head games, not bad romance)
And she might not be able to stop him. (There’s a sequel, so what does that tell you about their chances of succeeding or her chances of stopping him?)
He came for the girl… And got the monster instead.
All the YA tropes hit by the time I got to page 249 and the kissing scene, and I almost went blind rolling my eyes that hard. This book is hitting almost all the tropes; it’s like a YA Romantasy trope Mad Libs. You have your:
- “heroine had one (but only one) previous relationship that is now either abusive (and thus needing the MMC to defend her against them) or clingy (giving her someone to feel guilty/angry/disgusted by so the MMC can rescue her for their neediness) so she’s not a blushing virgin (or at least not a relationship/kissing virgin) and can now favorably compare the MMC to who came before
- Wicked stepmother
- Emotionally constipated, yet caring father
- Cruel prince
- Female friend/relative who falls for said prince
- Character you just know female friend/relative is actually going to wind up with
- Mysterious flashbacks of mysterious character
- Creepy doctor that tortures people for the sake of progress
- Antagonists not realizing that FMC has changed/snapped/given in to the Dark Side/come to chew bubblegum and kick butt and she’s all out of bubblegum until it’s too late
- MMC smelling like either the entirety of a Bath & Body Works or the cologne section of Sephora (I swear, Romantasy writers have a Quartermaster of tropes, and when they list all the scents available and ask what scent do you want to use for your MMC, the writers just say “yes”)
- FMC being noticeably shorter than MMC (can’t we ever have a female lead that is only an inch or two shorter, his exact height, or taller? Would it kill someone?)
- MMC wrapping FMC in his manly arms and glaring possessively at whoever hurt/upset/mildly inconvenienced her
- FMC sinking into the warmth/safety/security/manliness/manly scent of MMC
- Losing control during the (usually) overly long and turgidly written kissing scene
- MMC growling/rumbling/sounding like a motorcycle while kissing MMC/breathing in FMC scent/being near FMC/being upset that someone upset FMC
- the measuring contest between MC and minor antagonist slightly because of long-seated hatred, mostly because antagonist has upset FMC
- Iron control (and iron something else) during inevitable sex scene. Again overly long, again turgid writing. (Now with added FMC clueless over exactly where MMC wants to kiss her) More burning, more heat, more spiraling loss of tightly-held control
- MMC having iron control that FMC causes him to lose
- MMC getting into arguments with allies over how “now that FMC has come around he’s reckless and not following plan” but who cares about plan and future of kingdom, there’s FMC to brood over
- Token female ally so FMC is not only girl in group. Luckily out of the two options (getting along like house on fire or snarky loathing that turns to begrudging respect) we get house on fire here; with added bonus of female ally being relative of MMC so no potential for romantic rivalry
- FMC giving in to mysterious villain/anti-hero/mentor to save herself/MMC/her family/her kingdom/her hairstyle and to defeat larger evil
- Dramatic gasp cliffhanger
- The MMC and his eyes (they’re grey)/hair (black, slightly long)/scent (manly)/build (even manlier)/clothing/facial expression being described every single time he’s on the page
- Shocking reveal Power-hungry character turning out to be a betrayer because they’re power-hungry, even though every reader saw it coming from their introduction
I swear, there’s a checklist that publishers have of tropes and plot points that they make authors fill out before they will allow a story to be published; because I could have probably written out a plot synopsis without ever opening the book and gotten everything right. How can you be this far in Elspeth and not know who the Nightmare actually is? You have known this entity for eleven years; I figured out who it had to be after maybe 30 pages. I can see why people recommend this book if you liked For the Wolf, because they are kissing cousins of each other. We do get in this one child murder, so that is a bit of a new one. For some reason, the Elspeth and Ravyn (and by the way, what’s with the total Romantasy spelling of that name?) give me Violet and Xaden vibes from Fourth Wing. I don’t know how I feel about Elspeth or Ravyn as characters; she’s fiery yet vulnerable, he’s manly yet caring. They make stupid decisions, because as usual, no one ever talks to anyone else. And the scene towards the end when he’s trying to rescue her, all I kept seeing was
I also want to ask; wool leggings instead of wool thigh highs, really? Interesting choice for Romantasy wardrobe. Jespyr, Ravyn’s sister, is probably my favorite character in the book, followed by Elspeth’s aunt Opal. Emory, Ravyn’s brother, is the ubiquitous “fey character who actually sees clearer than everyone else”, and is not really in the book enough to have an opinion formed. Renelm, Ravyn’s cousin, is a paraphrase of Dean Wormer in Animal House; “Bitter, drunk and snarky is no way to go through life, son”.
And with all the other criticisms, there is one more problem: I’m going to buy the sequel. Because despite the tropes, despite the laughable writing of the kissing and sex scenes, despite the occasionally brainless main characters, the main plot is fascinating. Yes, it’s formulaic, yes it’s very similar to a dozen YA novels I’ve already read; I still want to know how the story ends. Can I guess based on previous experience? Yes. Is the romance the least interesting and most groan-worthy part of the book? Definitely. Does the fact that every last name (and some first names) being some kind of tree (or Welsh variation, or cutesy tragedeigh of an animal), and the Kingdom being called Blunders have me wanting to yeet the book across the room (like the kissing scene almost made me)? Yep. Am I rolling my eyes so hard over how Elspeth is physically described by the end of the book?
Will I read the second book even if I’m hating myself a little bit the entire time? Unfortunately, yes. Because there is something about this book that made it unable to be put down, not that I have quite figured out what it is. I would just need the characters to be less themselves, and a little less romance, unless it’s better written. Unfortunately, Romantasy is like kudzu or bamboo; I swore I would never read it, and then one day it seems like all the books I’m interested in are Romantasy. I miss the days when I could read a Fantasy book and the romance was a background subplot, not the main point of the story. Even better is that I didn’t realize Gillig was also the author of The Knight and the Moth, so I have already bought that. I’m now a little gun-shy about starting that one.
So basically, if darkly gothic Romantasy novels are your taste, or you want an intriguing plot as long as you ignore the romance, I would recommend this. I kind of, sort of, maybe, mildly enjoyed it. Ish.
