Michael Barnes
Road to Ruin by Hana Lee was described to me as a Max Max: Fury Road-inspired fantasy with magic-fuelled motorcycles, a dangerous wasteland, and romantic letter writing, this is an accurate description. The story explodes with our protagonist Jin a courier one of the few who travel outside the safety of the walled cities known as kerinas, delivering goods and letters and dodging dangerous mana storms, outlaw raiders, and aggressive dinosaur-like beasts with Jin being attacked by a flying a pteroper a wild miniature 4 winged pterosaur (about the size of motor cycle helmet) whose she names Screech and whose injury she treats gives us our first indication that our outlaw isn't quite as hard and tough as she pretends to be.
The others in this burgeoning polycute are Prince Kadrin and Princess Yi-Nereen – who live in separate Kerinas – for years. Because Kadrin is dyslexic, Jin has always read Nereen’s letters aloud to him; because women in Nereen’s Kerina are not taught to write, Nereen has always dictated her letters to Kadrin to Jin. These letters open each of the books chapters.
The Lesbrary describes it thus "the world-building of Road to Ruin, which is a delightful combination of fantasy and steampunk. This is clearly a society in decline, able to field motor bikes but also penned in magically-walled cities that are constantly on the verge of failure. You have some of the hallmarks of non-modern fantasy—couriers, knights, winged beasts, and magic sources—but clearly set in the long aftermath of some dystopian climate event. I thought it was very fun and imaginative, and I loved that it allowed us some of the tropes of romantic fantasy such as letter writing and royalty and arranged marriages while also giving us an extremely hot queer motorcycle aesthetic".
Very grateful the second in the duology Flight of the Fallen is available So I can dive right in.
Road to Ruin by Hana Lee was described to me as a Max Max: Fury Road-inspired fantasy with magic-fuelled motorcycles, a dangerous wasteland, and romantic letter writing, this is an accurate description. The story explodes with our protagonist Jin a courier one of the few who travel outside the safety of the walled cities known as kerinas, delivering goods and letters and dodging dangerous mana storms, outlaw raiders, and aggressive dinosaur-like beasts with Jin being attacked by a flying a pteroper a wild miniature 4 winged pterosaur (about the size of motor cycle helmet) whose she names Screech and whose injury she treats gives us our first indication that our outlaw isn't quite as hard and tough as she pretends to be.
The others in this burgeoning polycute are Prince Kadrin and Princess Yi-Nereen – who live in separate Kerinas – for years. Because Kadrin is dyslexic, Jin has always read Nereen’s letters aloud to him; because women in Nereen’s Kerina are not taught to write, Nereen has always dictated her letters to Kadrin to Jin. These letters open each of the books chapters.
The Lesbrary describes it thus "the world-building of Road to Ruin, which is a delightful combination of fantasy and steampunk. This is clearly a society in decline, able to field motor bikes but also penned in magically-walled cities that are constantly on the verge of failure. You have some of the hallmarks of non-modern fantasy—couriers, knights, winged beasts, and magic sources—but clearly set in the long aftermath of some dystopian climate event. I thought it was very fun and imaginative, and I loved that it allowed us some of the tropes of romantic fantasy such as letter writing and royalty and arranged marriages while also giving us an extremely hot queer motorcycle aesthetic".
Very grateful the second in the duology Flight of the Fallen is available So I can dive right in.