Rise of the Fallen Court: An addictive fantasy romance you need for 2024 inspired by the fairytale of Rapunzel! by Lilly InkwoodMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
Did I love it or hate? Did I even understand it? I don't know.
Blanche is King Etienne's sister. She has the ability to enter other people's minds while they are sleeping and rummage around their memories. Their society is very misogynistic, men from the Red Kingdom who have magic are taught to use it for attack and defence whilst women are taught to sue their magic for domestic purposes (eg filling wells with water), and women cannot ascend to the throne or hold power. Blanche's magic is very rare, there hasn't been another mind-walker for hundreds of years, and is a closely guarded secret.
But gradually Blanche comes to realise that her brother is using her gift to identify people who oppose his reign and then torture and kill them, so she tries to actively thwart him by both encouraging a distant cousin to build up an army to defeat Etienne and by warning dissidents before she 'informs' on them. For this trespass she is exiled to Mora's Tower in the middle of nowhere and the head of the magic school binds her powers. But deep in the forest, accompanied by other disenfranchised young women who have displeased their families, Blanche begins to ferment revolution.
Initially I thought my confusion with this book was that it was the second book in a series, but having read the blurb for the first book it appears to be nothing to do with this one (albeit it might be set in the same world). Then I thought the confusion was because the book jumps back and forth in time (and I never read the headers of chapters) between now, when Blanche was at court, and various times at Mora's Tower. But now I've finished I suspect that this could have been an epic fantasy (what is going on with the Blue Kingdom and the Green Kingdom) but not all of it made it to the finished book and so there is a whole load of back story/side story that we don't know, and what is that epilogue all about? Ah, I've just read a review by someone who read the first book and apparently this book is set 44 years before the first one - so apparently the epilogue made sense to them.
Fascinating characters, interesting world building, vague similarity to Rapunzel, confusing. I also felt it went on too long (without explaining how the pieces fit together), I was ready to finish reading a good hour or two before it ended. But I am intrigued as to the other book(s) in the series.
So I veered between a two star and a four star, so plumbed for the middle of the road three stars.
I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley.
View all my reviews
No comments:
Post a Comment