Foz Meadows

CA: rape, suicidal ideation, animal death (off-page; aftermath on-page); fantasy violence

This fantasy romance took me a bit to settle into. The pace is leisurely, and while there is a lot of plot going on, the focus is often on the interior lives of the two main characters. None of this is a criticism, in fact I think these things elevated the novel. And once I did settle in, I was delighted to be in its company for over five hundred pages. The plot involves an arranged marriage between two noblemen from different territories and the resulting and ongoing court intrigue and politics (plus muuuurder). The world Meadows has built is an affirmational wonder, with one of the territories operating under strict gender roles, heteronormativity, and tight expectations around sex, and the other operating as an entirely queernorm society. With one member of our couple coming from each society, there is a delightful amount of story-appropriate consideration of how two such societies operate, and that was a joy. I loved watching the two characters fall for each other (slowly--it's my favorite kind of slow burn, the sort where the falling and realizing is slow but the characters are rarely apart), and the book as a whole has the kind of tenderness about it that never fails to delight me and which I am always seeking more of in my fiction. Recommended, especially if you wish the current romantasy trend in publishing skewed queerer and/or contained more care and craft at the sentence-level.… (more)