Starling & The Moon Blade

Very short romantasy novella focused on the love story between Serilda and Barukhan - one human, the other the favoured son to the Moon Fae clan's Great Hanim. The main trope is forbidden love, as Barukhan is expected to fulfill his destiny of becoming his mother's Moon Blade - a position that leaves no space for personal life.

Fans of romantasy will find this short story quite enjoyable! The focus is mostly on the romance side of the genre, as fantasy and political elements of the world building are not explained in detail and only glimpsed here and there as "background noise" - an aspect of the novello which I enjoyed, the fact that we are expected to understand the context right away as if we live in the same world as the show more protagonists, without having to delve too deep into the "hows" and "whys". I think it works well especially for a short story as this one - and for the series as a whole, where each novella happens in the same universe (if I understood correctly) and so we get to know different aspects of the worldbuilding from different stories and characters. However, for my personal taste, I prefer longer novels and stories where - while not necessarily with deep explanations - the fantasy and political aspects are taken more into consideration, and the romance tropes develop in relation to them, not taking centre stage.

Stylistically-wise, the novella is written nicely (it could have been way worse!) but a little too "studied", with so many metaphors and similes that it sometimes felt too much. One thing I noticed is that the word "breath" - with some variants like breathless and others - is heavily repeated. Another word I also noticed is "brow". Apart from the "preciousness" of the language, everything else was enjoyable. There is a small mistake in the "about the author" section, though, with a word being repeated twice in the sentence.

One thing I would recommend changing is the description of the book series, where it is mentioned that every story has a happy ending. Although it might be intuitive that the whole series would exhibit happy endings, it felt a bit like spoilering myself when I read it again before starting the novella - especially because the plot itself was also explaining a lot, and so I already knew the what, who, why, and the end before even opening the book. What was missing was the how.

Overall, quite enjoyable short story, romance is definitely the main focus, the style is a little bit too refined. 3,5 stars! show less