Review: Queen of Coin and Whispers

Queen of Coin and Whispers 

Rating: 2.5/5

Buy or Borrow: Borrow 

Source: Copy courtesy of the publisher in exchange for an honest review 

When teenage queen Lia inherits her corrupt uncle’s bankrupt kingdom, she brings a new spymaster into the fold ... Xania, who takes the job to avenge her murdered father.

Faced with dangerous plots and hidden enemies, can Lia and Xania learn to rely on each another, as they discover that all is not fair in love and treason?

In a world where the throne means both power and duty, they must decide what to sacrifice for their country – and for each other … 

I really wanted to rate this higher because I was so here for the f/f romance and all the LGBTQ+ representation the book provides but while I did enjoy myself somewhat reading this, it ultimately fell a little flat for me. 

It does jump straight in with the plot and things move forward quickly, the book is fast paced which I appreciated and there was a huge amount of political intrigue and plotting and so on. There are really smooth and seamless transitions through time throughout and as for our main character Lia, she was very determined. She has a lot to contend with and there's a lot of political treachery that she has to find a way around and she wants to be better than her Uncle and make things better but as she discovers it's not too easy to do so. 

Our other POV is Xania, she's quite the badass and she becomes more and more adept at her job as Whispers over time throughout the book. She and Lia are quite ruthless, or at least they're supposed to be which was quite refreshing I just didn't particularly feel any true danger or high stakes throughout the book. I also appreciate side character Matthias. I loved his entire attitude and I spent a good chunk of the book really hoping he wasn't going to turn out to be shady. 

Unfortunately, I can't do a review anywhere near the length that I usually would as that's really all the positives I can say about this book. It was just...okay. I read this book in two sittings although it took me a little while to work up to reading the other half, I put the book down and I didn't feel that burning need to pick it back up and finish it I'm afraid. 

On the negative side of things, I feel like while the pace is fast and we move through time quickly, it's at the cost of developing the characters. I don't feel like they were fleshed out enough and that also affects the romance as well. I personally felt the romance to be quite sudden, I was looking forward to watching it develop and having some slow burn to squeal over but it was just suddenly there. I feel like some time could have been taken to fully develop the characters and the romance, and it was a little unconvincing how adept Xania became at being Whispers with no previous training doing such things. You do see her get more adept at it over the course of the book but the time skips do allow for it to be glossed over. There were just a lot of things about Xania that didn't really make much sense, she could just suddenly do this, or she'd learned this and so on. 

The world building was okay, it could have had more depth to it and I didn't really have a true image in my mind of the setting. I found it difficult to be bothered about the characters when they weren't that fleshed out so while there's plenty of blood and action and politics I was kind of breezing through the book without feeling too invested. The writing style was also a bit bland and there wasn't really that much of a difference between Lia's narrative and Xania's. The writing didn't draw me in at all and I felt like when it came to Xania the author was trying too hard to make her seem dangerous and edgy with her inner monologue and some of the imagery used. 

Overall, Queen of Coin and Whispers is a quick, fast read and it's an okay book. It's not truly bad, but it could have been improved a little, like it could quite easily have been a duology and more time could have been taken to develop the characters, the romance and the world. There were too many things about this that were a little hard to believe, and Xania wasn't entirely convincing a lot of the time. The romance lacked chemistry and development, and the characters weren't fleshed out enough for me to truly care about them and what happened to them. The setting could have been any generic fantasy setting with one little original twist and the writing didn't work to draw you into the story. I found myself making myself finish this once I'd put it down and I was overall very disappointed because I'd been so excited for the f/f romance that's in this!

Review: The Obsidian Tower

 

The Obsidian Tower

Rating: 4/5

Buy or Borrow: Buy

Source: Copy courtesy of the publisher in exchange for an honest review! 

The mage-marked granddaughter of a ruler of Vaskandar, Ryx was destined for power and prestige at the top of Vaskandran society. But her magic is broken; all she can do is uncontrollably drain the life from everything she touches, and Vaskandar has no place for a mage with unusable powers.

Then, one night, two terrible accidents befall her: Ryx accidentally kills a visiting dignitary in self-defense, activating a mysterious magical artifact sealed in an ancient tower in the heart of her family’s castle.

Ryx flees, seeking a solution to her deadly magic. She falls in with a group of unlikely magical experts investigating the disturbance in Vaskandar—and Ryx realizes that her family is in danger and her domain is at stake. She and her new colleagues must return to the family stronghold to take control of the artifact that everyone wants to claim—before it destroys the world. 

I'm going to be honest, The Obsidian Tower has been an anticipated read of mine for a little while now! I read and completely loved Caruso's Swords and Fire trilogy and I was really excited to see what she would come up with next. As it turns out, that would be a bisexual mage with magic that doesn't work quite right and prevents her from getting close to people in case she kills them...and then there's a minor incident with a shady door that may or may not lead to ruin for their entire Kingdom. No biggie. 

There's tension from the start with peace talks about to be underway between two neighbouring Kingdoms, and that's before someone goes snooping where they shouldn't and unleashes all manner of chaos into the world. The Obsidian Tower is set in the same world as her debut trilogy, though a different area of it and one that deals with magic quite differently. I was excited to see more of the magic system that Caruso established in her previous trilogy, as well as see an interesting perspective on certain magical technology that's used! That being said, if you haven't read the previous trilogy it's not a problem! You can quite easily read this without having read it, all it adds a little bit of extra understanding when it comes to the relationship between Vaskandar and the Serene Empire! 

I actually really liked Ryxander as a main character, I thought she was interesting. Her power is dangerous and she's constantly having to keep herself under control to ensure she doesn't hurt anyone and she can't touch any living thing without consequences. I felt so much empathy for her and I was right there with her when she got to relax when it came to controlling her power and she got to hug her friends....and actually have friends! I was so happy for her, and then equally as heartbroken as she was when that was all potentially taken away. I feel like we see her very isolated and closed off, and then slowly bloom as the book goes on and she finds her people. 

As for the other characters I loved every single member of the Rookery and I can't wait to get to see more of them! Particularly Ashe....just let her stab something Foxglove, one little thing! Ashe made me laugh so many times throughout this book and I loved the banter between all of them. Whisper was an intriguing addition, he's the castle's resident chimera but there's clearly more to him than meets the eye! Ardith was a fantastic addition and so relatable, they kept saying 'I just wanted to drink your beer and eat your food' or words to that effect and I was reading like...understandable. I was waiting to see whether there was going to be more to their relationship with Ryx, and I'm quite hoping we get to see more of them in the future! They were just such a great comic addition to proceedings and kept the mood up! Then there's Severin. As soon as he was introduced I was like 'hello, you're going to be added to my collection of favourites aren't you?' and then it turned out he was the love interest. I thought he might be, but the way he was introduced and who he was had me thinking otherwise and a little sad about that fact only to be surprised again later. He also wasn't at all what I was expecting, I was expecting him to take charge more but he's very much under the control of his brother and struggles to go against him. I'm hoping he'll come in to his own more in the next book although I'm very much here for their relationship!  

The thing I loved the most about this book was all of the representation! Our main character is bisexual, we've got a non-binary side character and two other side character's are lesbian's so we get a nice f/f romance that had me cheerfully wanting to bang their oblivious heads together at one point! 

The thing I love the most about Caruso's writing is that she weaves these intricate, rich worlds with plots involving magic and politics and explains it all without dumping a lot of information on you or making the book dry in the process. Her writing is riveting and has you eager to know more and keep on reading to see what happens next. I particularly liked the inclusion of a good old murder mystery element this time around and had quite a lot of fun lining up my suspects and trying to figure out who it was! There's also some original twists on some other things too! 

The Obsidian Tower is wonderfully paced and weaves in brilliantly crafted characters some of which you love and some of which you can hate, with political intrigue, impending potential war, a murder mystery, a mysterious and definitely shady door leading to who knows what and uh...I don't think anyone really wants to find out, and a fun magic system! I quite easily binge read this in two sittings and I'm already impatient for the sequel to get back to the characters and see what fresh hell will be unleashed next!