King's Dragon by Kate Elliott

The Kingdom of Wendar is in turmoil. King Henry still holds the crown, but his reign has long been contested by his sister Sabella, and there are many eager to flock to her banner. Internal conflict weakens Wendar's defences, drawing raiders, human and inhuman, across its borders. Terrifying portents abound and dark spirits walk the land in broad daylight.

Suddenly two innocents are thrust into the midst of the conflict. Alain, a young man granted a vision by the Lady of Battles, and Liath, a young woman with the power to change the course of history. Both must discover the truth about themselves before they can accept their fates. For in a war where sorcery, not swords, may determine the final outcome, the price of failure may be more than their own lives.

There is no good audiobook version of this book. I tried one, it was awful.

This is just a reminder so I don't try to listen to this again in the future.

2.5 stars, marking it as 3 because this isn't a bad book, I just couldn't finish it, couldn't hold myself back from other titles. I usually don't review books that I haven't finished (and how many more times can I say that?), but I had such high hopes for this one that I'm disappointed I couldn't bring myself to keep going with it. The writing is excellent; Elliott is a fantastic fantasy writer and does manage to create characters that I really wanted to see through, and she puts them in interesting situations. The book starts with a man being left by the mother of his child, and the identity of that child is a fairly constant topic of the early part of the book. I really loved the story of Liath, and want to know if she matures and gets past the trauma that she suffers in the early part of her story, but then...

Two things were keeping me from continuing on. There's just not enough of Liath. The other POV is interesting, but what's irritating is that the two POVs are barely connected and I didn't want to wade through more, or skip ahead. Other POVs get introduced and they are even less interesting. I just didn't feel interested in these people and it was irritating to keep pretending.

The other thing that kept distracting me was that this world is basically medieval Europe with a few modifications. Let me be careful in how I say that, as you might think this is a made-up world that just superficially resembles Europe, as in much of fantasy: this is basically a world that has the same geography as Europe, with a feudal system much like Europe in the eleventh century, and a fully-functioning replica of the Roman Catholic Church with a few modifications to its theology. The church hierarchy only differs in its treatment of women, i.e. there are female bishops, deacons, and so on. This was REALLY distracting. I prefer a completely made-up world. I love medieval Europe, but if I want it, I read nonfiction.

So there you go. This is a good book, but these distracting elements made me put it down.