Review: Lonen’s War by Jeffe Kennedy

Posted on July 19, 2016July 23, 2016 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | A- Reviews> blog tours> book reviews

Lonen's War (Sorcerous Moons #1) by Jeffe Kennedy
Formats available: ebook
Series: Sorcerous Moons #1
Pages: 233
Published by Brightlynx Publishing on July 19th 2016
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Amazon, Kobo
Goodreads

An Unquiet Heart
Alone in her tower, Princess Oria has spent too long studying her people’s barbarian enemies, the Destrye—and neglected the search for calm that will control her magic and release her to society. Her restlessness makes meditation hopeless and her fragility renders human companionship unbearable. Oria is near giving up. Then the Destrye attack, and her people’s lives depend on her handling of their prince…
A Fight Without Hope
When the cornered Destrye decided to strike back, Lonen never thought he’d live through the battle, let alone demand justice as a conqueror. And yet he must keep up his guard against the sorceress who speaks for the city. Oria’s people are devious, her claims of ignorance absurd. The frank honesty her eyes promise could be just one more layer of deception.
A Savage Bargain
Fighting for time and trust, Oria and Lonen have one final sacrifice to choose… before an even greater threat consumes them all.

My Review:

If you like stories of overlooked princesses coming into their own in spite of withering expectations, you will love Lonen’s War. Likewise if you enjoy epic fantasy with lots of political skullduggery, ( like The Goblin Emperor and Sorcerer to the Crown) because this book certainly fills that bill as well.

And if you are a fan of Jeffe Kennedy’s Twelve Kingdoms series, you are going to absolutely adore this.

The story in Lonen’s War has strong resemblances to the story in The Mark of the Tala, as well as The Queen of the Tearling. In all of these stories, a young woman who has been locked away and denied the knowledge of her birthright finds out everything anyway, and takes somewhat untutored command when events head towards disaster. Also as in The Mark of the Tala, the definition of “barbarian” depends a lot on which side of the conflict you are standing in. If handsome is as handsome does, and barbarism is as barbarian does, the supposedly savage Destrye turn out to be way less barbarous than the supposedly civilized Barans.

No one expects any of these overlooked princesses to succeed. In fact, there are plenty of forces in all three stories who are gleefully counting on failure – and most of them are supposedly on the princess’s side.

The story in Lonen’s War starts out as a conquest story, and ends up as the very beginning of a very necessary (and probably very messessary) political overthrow. The powers that be in Oria’s kingdom of Bara have held unchallenged sway for far too long.

We have a tale of power corrupting, absolute power corrupting absolutely, and all the chickens coming home to roost in the form of vicious monsters who are happy to kill everyone on both sides to get what they believe is their due.

Oria is the princess that everyone tries to forget. She seems to be unable to muster the maturity to grasp the magical power that her people hold. Now in her early 20s, she is a princess-bird in a gilded cage, who must remain in her cage or be overwhelmed by the unmanaged and unmanageable emotions of others.

Oria is thought to be emotionally and psychologically fragile, and is kept physically fragile as well. She is also kept in the dark. She may not be able to master her people’s magic, but her intellect works perfectly well. As she proves when her country is conquered and she is the last member of the royal house still standing.

But the peace that she negotiates with the leader of their conquerors is as fragile as she is, and her power is swept away by law and custom the moment that an alternative ruler is found. It is up to Oria to make common cause with the Barbarian King, Lonen, in order to forge a peace for both their countries, to face an enemy that will destroy them all.

For sport.

Escape Rating A-: Lonen’s War starts out just a bit slow. It is necessary for the progress of the story to see the way that power is controlled in Bara, and to learn both just how much Oria has been kept in the dark, and how deeply out of touch the powers that be in her country are. But when Oria is essentially gnashing her teeth at everything that is being kept from her, this reader was gnashing right along with her.

All of the problems that occur in this story are problems that the Barans have brought upon themselves. I would say that they may deserve their fate, but it is the people who will die first while the so-called nobility hide behind their walls.

The Barans believed that they could do as they pleased to the rest of their world, because they believed that no one could stop them. And they choose to stop at nothing to stay on top of what turns out to be a rather decaying heap. It is Oria, with her lack of formal training, who is able to think outside of the conventional box and see her people for what they really are.

Although the story is titled Lonen’s War, most of the perspective comes from Oria’s side of the story. Lonen and his people are forced to bring their war to Baran, but it is Oria who helps find a peace that can work for both parties. Unfortunately there are just too many forces arrayed against her among her own people for her way to be easy. Or quick.

One of the constant themes in this story that is both interesting and frustrating centers around the keeping of secrets. Oria is kept in the dark because she is supposedly incapable. And the powers that be do everything in their power to reinforce that assumption. They want a weak and easily manipulated monarch, and Oria is not that.

However, once Oria finally becomes privy to some of those deadly secrets, she in her turn keeps them from Lonen so that he will fall in with her plans. She has the best of intentions, but those secrets are bound to bite them both in the ass in later books. Especially as our heroes are about to enter into a marriage of convenience (and probably a lot of inconvenience) as this book closes. For this political alliance to turn into a real marriage, someone is going to have to eat a lot of crow.

I can hardly wait. Oria’s Gambit is coming next month!

Review: For Crown and Kingdom by Grace Draven and Jeffe Kennedy

Posted on June 2, 2016June 1, 2016 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | A Reviews> book reviews

For Crown and Kingdom Formats available: ebook
Pages: 226
on May 29th 2016
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo
Goodreads

~Two fantasy romance tales by bestselling and award winning authors Jeffe Kennedy and Grace Draven~

***The Crown of the Queen: a novella of the Twelve Kingdoms by Jeffe Kennedy

It's been a lifetime since librarian Dafne Mailloux saw the coronation of the tyrant who destroyed her family. She did her part to pull him off the High Throne. But his daughter, the would-be Queen, and her sisters must still tame their conquest. If her victory is to last, Dafne must forge peace with the subtle, ruthless methods of a diplomat--and the worst memories of her life...

***The Undying King by Grace Draven

The stories are told in whispers, even after so long: of a man whose fair rule soured when he attained eternal youth. Imprisoned by a sorceress wife in a city out of time and place, he has passed into legend. Few believe in him, and fewer would set their hopes on his mercy. But Imogen has no choice. To break the curse that's isolated her since birth, she'll find the Undying King--and answer his secrets with her own...

My Review:

For Crown and Kingdom is a duology, two separate works of fantasy romance. I read the first entry in the pair, The Crown of the Queen, not long ago, and absolutely loved it. Last night, I read The Undying King by Grace Draven, and loved it almost as much. This is the first time I’ve read something by this author, and now I understand why my friends at The Book Pushers love her Master of Crows so much.

Someday, when my virtual TBR pile isn’t virtually toppling over, I have to read Master of Crows.

But in the meantime, I have this little treat of a story in The Undying King.

The story has the feeling of being inside a myth. If fiction is the lie that tells the truth, this story feels like one of those truths that exists back in the mists of time. Even though there is no fairy tale of Cededa the Fair and the lost city of Tineroth, there should be. It feels true.

And it feels true because it does an excellent job of combining elements that we know, things that feel true because even though these specific incidents might not have happened, they echo things that do.

Imogen is a young woman with a death curse. It’s not that she herself is cursed to die, no more than any more than any other mortal, but she is cursed that every person she touches dies instantly. This has nothing to do with intent, or at least not her intent. The curse is part of her blood and bone.

The first time she touches a person without gloves, it is to bring her adoptive mother the release of death, after a long, painful and debilitating illness. Niamh can’t be saved, she can only be given the mercy that shortens her last few hours of agony.

But she leaves Imogen alone, and with the burden of a promise. To read her diary, take the magic key found within, and make her way to the lost city of Tineroth. In fabled Tineroth the Undying King haunts and protects his crumbling city. And Cededa is a much-practiced (4,000 years gives one a lot of time to practice!) sorcerer who should be able to remove Imogen’s curse.

4,000 years of loneliness and endless existence have burned the anger and cruelty out of Cededa the Butcher, as he was once known. With nothing but time to reflect on his past deeds, the man who once slaughtered cities beyond counting has nothing left but regret, remorse and the wish for an end. He has become again what he was in the beginning, Cededa the Fair, the handsomest man that many, including especially Imogen, have ever seen.

When Imogen reaches him after a magical journey, he bargains with her for the one thing no one else has ever been able to give him. In return for removing her curse, Cededa asks Imogen for four months of her company in his living ghost town.

He seeks companionship. She hopes for the ability to live a normal life. Instead, they find that her curse matches his mistaken burden every bit as well as they match each other. Until the world intrudes, and steals her away from the life and the man she has come to love.

Escape Rating A: Like The Crown of the Queen, The Undying King feels utterly complete at its ending, a rare feat for a novella. (I only said I didn’t love it quite as much as The Crown of the Queen because that story is part of a series I am already totally hooked on).

The Undying King is a beautiful love story, while it explores themes that resonate long after the book is done.

It is a coming of age story. Imogen is relatively young, and certainly somewhat innocent, at the beginning of the story. She is also intelligent and well-taught, but she has no experience with relationships of any kind. Her adoptive mother Niamh is the only person she speaks with, for fear that someone will accidentally touch her and die.

Her mother and mentor sends her on a quest, to return the key that Cededa gave her long ago, and to find a cure for her curse. Her journey is both magically begun and magically eased – the key makes her path sure and short, and creates a bridge for her where none exists.

Tineroth and Cededa have faded into the mists of legend. Even the stories are fading. His is the story of the ring that came with a curse. He wanted immortality, and he found it. But that gift binds him to the place that gave it to him. He cannot leave, and no one can find him. His loneliness is absolute, along with his regrets.

Imogen and Cededa are equal and opposite. She kills with a touch, and he can never die. Separately, they live in complete isolation. But together, her curse brings him just enough mortality for him to feel life again. And his resistance to her curse makes him the one person she can touch whenever and however she likes.

Their love seems almost preordained. But there is always a snake in the garden. In this case, it is Imogen’s unknown past that drives them apart. Because of course Imogen is a lost princess, and that makes her a pawn.

When she makes herself a queen, the ending is glorious.

Review: The Pages of the Mind by Jeffe Kennedy

Posted on May 23, 2016May 22, 2016 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | B- Reviews> blog tours> book reviews

The Pages of the Mind (The Uncharted Realms #1; The Twelve Kingdoms #4) by Jeffe Kennedy
Formats available: paperback, ebook
Series: Twelve Kingdoms #4, Uncharted Realms #1
Pages: 432
Published by Kensington on May 31st 2016
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

An Orphan's Throne
Magic has broken free over the Twelve Kingdoms. The population is beset by shapeshifters and portents, landscapes that migrate, uncanny allies who are not quite human…and enemies eager to take advantage of the chaos.
Dafne Mailloux is no adventurer--she's a librarian. But the High Queen trusts Dafne's ability with languages, her way of winnowing the useful facts from a dusty scroll, and even more important, the subtlety and guile that three decades under the thumb of a tyrant taught her.
Dafne never thought to need those skills again. But she accepts her duty. Until her journey drops her into the arms of a barbarian king. He speaks no tongue she knows but that of power, yet he recognizes his captive as a valuable pawn. Dafne must submit to a wedding of alliance, becoming a prisoner-queen in a court she does not understand. If she is to save herself and her country, she will have to learn to read the heart of a wild stranger. And there are more secrets written there than even Dafne could suspect…
Praise for The Mark of the Tala
"Magnificent…a richly detailed fantasy world." --RT Book Reviews, 4½ stars, Top Pick
"Well written and swooningly romantic." --Library Journal, starred review

My Review:

I have, for the most part, adored Jeffe Kennedy’s Twelve Kingdoms series. Ami’s book, The Tears of the Rose, was the lone exception, because Ami spends the first half of the book as a spoiled princess bitch. While she gets much, much better, the first half of the book drags a bit.

As much as I loved the bridge novella featuring librarian Dafne Mailloux, The Crown of the Queen, Dafne’s own story in The Pages of the Mind drove me batty. I loved the beginning, and liked the end, but in this case it’s the middle that gave me fits.

Let me explain…

Dafne has been the librarian at Castle Ordnang for decades. Her family held the land and castle that formerly sat on the same spot, but when High King Uorsin decided that Castle Columba would be the seat of his new throne, the end was inevitable. He conquered the castle, razed the building, and built his capital in its place. Daphne was the only member of her family to survive the siege. While she may be, as she says, “ a demon on documents” in her early years it was her ability to hide in plain sight that saved her life over and over.

That and the fact that Queen Salena charged her with caring for her daughters, the princess Ursula, Ami and Andi. Ursula is now High Queen, after the events in The Talon of the Hawk and The Crown of the Queen. It is Daphne’s task to be Ursula’s adviser.

Dafne has always been an observer and recorder. That’s what librarians do. So Daphne is more surprised than anyone when Ursula tasks her with the position of ambassador, first to the island kingdom of Nahanau, and then to the court of Dasnaria. Nahanau has been damaged by the movement of the magical barrier that formerly surrounded the Tala, and Dasnaria is the home of Ursula’s lover Harlan. His people might ally with the Twelve, now Thirteen Kingdoms, or might attempt to conquer them instead. The Kingdoms are still recovering from the late King’s treachery and tyranny, Ursula needs to stave off that possible war.

So off Dafne goes, with Harlan’s older brother Prince Kral as escort and guide.

We expect treachery, or at least some double-dealing on Kral’s part. It seems to be what the Dasnarians are known for. So when Kral essentially hands Dafne over to King Nakoa KauPo as either a hostage, sex slave or unwilling bride, readers are not totally surprised.

But the twists and turns that overtake Dafne’s fate from that point forward change the course of her life into directions she never expected. And is never sure that she wants or can even accept.

Escape Rating B-: I loved the beginning. Dafne’s life as librarian turned adviser fit right in with the snippets of her character we have seen in the earlier books. She has been working all of her life towards seeing Ursula crowned High Queen. And she not only expects the job of Royal Adviser, but is totally prepared and qualified for it.

She enjoys being the power behind the throne, and doesn’t see herself as powerful at all. She is merely an instrument of Ursula’s power. And she’s very, very good at it.

But when she is effectively abandoned at the Nahanau court, the story, along with Daphne’s personality, went temporarily off the rails for this reader. Because the story devolved into both the fated mate trope and the magic peen fallacy. That it turns out that both of these issues are actually manipulated into being by a third party redeems things somewhat, but not completely.

Dafne seems to become completely enslaved to sex with King Nakoa, to the point where she loses all her sense at many points. Yes, this sometimes happens when people discover how good sex can actually be, but that level of crazy usually happens earlier in their lives. Dafne is old enough that she believes she is no longer capable of bearing children. Becoming that mushy-headed just didn’t feel right.

For a significant part of the story, Dafne understands little to nothing of the language around her. The Nahanaus speak a language that is not derived from any of the several that Dafne knows. So there is a big portion of the story where a person who is only comfortable when in full possession of all the knowledge available has none to work with. It feels off-character when Dafne is forced to resort to stereotypical feminine wiles that she has never relied upon in order to get information felt wrong.

There is also a huge power imbalance in this relationship. Nakoa essentially kidnaps Dafne and keeps her prisoner. That she falls for him in these circumstances where she is totally dependent on him smacks of Stockholm Syndrome. Which does get called out later in the story, and then all too easily dismissed.

It turns out that everyone in this situation is being manipulated by a third party, one whose eventual advent into the story is explosive enough to kick the story back on track.

One of the things that I liked best about the previous entries in this series is that the princesses did not need to change who they were to find fulfillment and happiness, or to find their equal in love. Dafne has to change completely to get through most of her adventures. It’s only at the end where she goes back to being the intellectual powerhouse that is her true self.

At the end of this story, there are several people still on the loose who seriously need to get their comeuppance, particularly Kral. While events turned out for the best, his duplicity still needs to be accounted for. And I look forward to reading all about it in The Edge of the Blade.

Review: The Crown of the Queen by Jeffe Kennedy

Posted on May 12, 2016May 11, 2016 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | A Reviews> book reviews

The Crown of the Queen Formats available: ebook
Series: Twelve Kingdoms #3.6
Pages: 100
on May 24th 2016
Purchasing Info: Author's Website
Goodreads

Dafne Mailloux, librarian and temporary babysitter to the heirs to the High Throne of the Twelve – now Thirteen – Kingdoms, finds it difficult to leave the paradise of Annfwn behind. Particularly that trove of rare books in temptingly unfamiliar languages. But duty calls, and hers is to the crown. It’s not like her heart belongs elsewhere. But how can she crown a queen who hesitates to take the throne?

My Review:

Jeffe Kennedy’s Talon of the Hawk made my “Best of 2015” list. I have adored every entry in her Twelve Kingdoms series, and was just a bit sad to see this epic fantasy series conclude last year, no matter how much I loved that conclusion. So I was pleased as punch when I was contacted to review The Crown of the Queen, a bridge novella between The Twelve Kingdoms and their continuation in The Uncharted Realms, which begins with The Pages of the Mind later this month.

When last we left our heroines, the war had just ended in a rather spectacular fashion. Princess Ursula had defeated the tyrant king Uorsin in single-combat, and the crown of the Twelve Kingdoms had just become hers. But Ursula, while she is picking up the reins of leadership, is unwilling to officially pick up the crown that she fought so hard for.

Uorsin was mad, ensorcelled and an utter bastard. Also tyrannical in a way that would fit right into Game of Thrones, complete with the bloody banquets. But he was also Ursula’s father, and she can’t seem to manage to forgive herself for killing him, no matter how utterly necessary his killing might have been.

And it was, after all, in single combat. It could easily have gone the other way, and Ursula was certainly fighting for her life, as well as the lives of everyone in the Twelve Kingdoms. A court of law would certainly call it self-defense.

But guilt is never logical, and Ursula is wallowing in it.

The heroine of this tale is Dafne Mailloux, the official and often disregarded librarian of the Twelve Kingdoms. Dafne, the daughter of a defeated kingdom, retreated to the library as a place of safety, in the hopes that the increasingly mad Uorsin would forget she existed.

His late queen entrusted the raising of her daughters, especially the future queen Ursula, to the young recluse. It was Queen Salena’s plan that Dafne would become her daughter’s high councilor in the future that she sacrificed herself to bring to pass. Now it is Dafne’s duty to bring some common-sense order out of the chaos that followed the death of the mad king.

And to, if necessary, shake some sense into his daughter. Dafne must take up her mantle, and deliver some unwelcome truths to the woman who must become High Queen – before the restless factions of the Twelve Kingdoms manage to shatter the kingdom back into its constituent parts.

Uorsin conquered the Twelve by ruthless war. The warrior-princess Ursula must learn to rule them with justice and law – before they get ahead of her and start ruling her.

Escape Rating A: I seldom give novellas an A rating. Not because I don’t enjoy them, but because the short length usually leaves me wanting something. The Crown of the Queen is an exception. Much as I might want to spend more time in the Twelve Kingdoms, this interlude does not need a full-length novel to tell its necessary tale. It would probably feel bloated if it were stretched to novel-length.

Dafne provides an excellent perspective on these events. She is at the center, but yet she stands a bit to one side. Her job is to provide advice and counsel, which requires that she keep a level head and a slightly outside point of view to do her job well. While she has been at the center of the court all her life, she is not a member of the royal family. Her job is to do the best she can for the kingdom and its people, often by telling the High Queen and the royal family things that they do not want to hear, no matter how much they might need to hear them.

We also have hints that Dafne’s own story will be bigger and more important some time later, but this is not her story. It is the story of Ursula’s coronation and the cementing of her place on the throne of the Twelve Kingdoms as they become Thirteen Kingdoms and probably Fourteen.

As Dafne herself says, they need a name that doesn’t involve numbers.

What we see in this story is Dafne negotiating events. It is up to her to get Ursula out of her funk and get her royal butt officially on the throne. With a lot of tough love, and help from Ursula’s partner Harlan, Dafne sets Ursula on the course to her coronation and all of the pomp and circumstance that must follow in order for Ursula’s reign to be seen as legitimate.

Dafne does a great job of making the machinations of politics seem not just interesting, but actually exciting. As a faithful reader of the series, I had tears in my own eyes during Ursula’s coronation ceremony.

Dafne’s deep knowledge of all the players in this drama helps her achieve her goals, and gives readers a great refresher on previous events at the same time. It marvelously whets the appetite for the epic story that is to come.

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