Another really strong story by CL Polk. It’s the first full length novel I’ve read from them, and I really enjoyed it. The world is so rich and fun to explore, but there were moments when I wished we had more background on certain aspects of the world. There’s a concept of “ether” that is extremely important to the end, but we barely get introduced to it until 2/3rds through the story. 

As usual, the characters are a delight. I loved the family dynamic between Grace and Miles, and Miles’ chemistry with Tristan is off the charts. Overall, a great first entry in the series. 

Overall a good story. I'm left mildly unsatisfied by the ending and how it all shook out, it feels like it pulled punches to provide a "happy ending", something like how I felt at the end of Eat the Rich, in which the story wasn't necessarily bad but didn't really feel like a, for lack of a better word, "realistic" ending.

I am, however, brainrotten, and can only think about parallels between necromancer/cavalier relationships in The Locked Tomb series and the stormsinger/secondary relationships in this book. Fascinating!

This was cute! I’m not sure it was cute enough for me to pursue the sequel books, but it was a pleasant light read.

The characters are likeable enough, although I felt that the author misjudged how many times

Grace

could betray someone without it draining a bit of their likability. I didn’t feel like we were seeing enough of any of them to really get attached, either. The main character gets the most development, but the fact that I have immediately forgotten his name upon finishing is a bad sign. Tristan is an archetype I find enjoyable, but Witchmark’s not the best rendition of it I’ve seen, and the intriguing hints of him having hidden problems lurking in the book’s equivalent of faerie land don’t get resolved here. In fact,

the main character agrees to marry him before they even talk about it.

Which is just one way in which it felt like the romance as well as the book in general was on a speedrun to an unearned happy conclusion. Characters do go through development, but it often feels like it’s because they must hit those notes in their character arcs, rather than because something has happened organically.

There’s an uncomfortable bent to the way the book handles its war on an neighbouring land, too. It does at least seem aware that colonization is bad, but that doesn’t stop the soldiers from being called “heroes” and people who “should be heroes,” both by characters and the narrative. The nods at pacifistic worldviews rarely include a discussion of how the Laneeri have been harmed. In fact, it wasn’t often clear whether the book thought that was the biggest problem, or the fact that the Aeland soldiers sent to war were traumatized. And of course it is people from this other land who get no dialogue, unless you count mad cackling; who use incense and necromancy and have “sky-priests” while the main characters remain somewhere recognizable as England even though it’s never called that. Who have no technology we learn of, unlike this not-England, and who are the only ones mentioned to use torture against POWs during the war and have no rules against harming civilians, including children. In the plot they’ve been wronged, but subtextually they’re framed as villains and terrifying, mysterious forces of violence. I’m not sure the book going And War Is Bad really made up for that. It feels thoughtless rather than deliberate, but doesn’t stop it from being uncomfortable and irritating.

I’ll admit I was going into this book expecting rather a lot, so perhaps I held it to an unfair standard. It was fun, and it did make for a good read on the plane. But I also felt nothing during its big dramatic conclusion. I’m not asking that every work be full of complication and moral complexity, but I need a bit more than this.

Gay tension! Secret witches! Murder mystery! (need I say more?)

Magic, mystery, queer romance, and criticism of class privilege suffuse this atmospheric Edwardian-inspired fantasy! In a world at war, a doctor with a hidden past and secret magical abilities allies with an alluring gentleman to investigate the murder of a patient and a pattern of inexplicable killings by the very veterans he heals, only to discover true evil may not reside across enemy lines but in all of that which powers the empire at home.