Prince of the Sorrows

This book was a complete surprise and a very happy one. I think I found this in some random recommendation list related to another book I was reading at the time. I'd never heard of Graves or seen their work anywhere else but I thought why not? Great decision.

Like I said in one of my during-reading comments, this is the adult book Holly Black wishes she wrote (referring to the disappointing “adult” Book of Night). It has many of the same elements as Black's books and draws from similar fae lore yet, while I would definitely recommend this to Black fans interested in MM, it does stand out on its own as well.

Well written with an easy to follow yet complex plot and interesting characters. I devoured this and can't wait for the next one.

First of all, though this didn't turn out to be a story I was enamoured by, I'd still recommend it! Most of the things I'm about to mention lean towards personal preference based gripes, so if other reviews and the premise intrigues you then please do give this book a shot.

With that said, I did have some mixed feelings about this.

I think the author's approach to writing world building didn't work for me. There were moments where we were almost abruptly bombarded with extensive purple-prose heavy descriptions of scenery. Instead of adding imagery and whatnot, I think it mostly felt contrived and interfered the story's pacing.

The love interest, Cylvan, is someone who I don't quite know how to feel about. There are so many times where he's so incredibly patronizing—which is a pet peeve of mine—to Saffron (the main character). He treats Saffron like absolute shit in the beginning, and I don't think enough was done to address that initial hostile behaviour. Cylvan goes from hating Saffron to caring for him too fast and suddenly. It felt like there were chapters missing or things that happened off-page between them that I wasn't aware of. Other than that Cylvan was pretty intriguing at times, and was probably the character who—even though I didn't like him as a person—to me, was the most interesting to read about.

Moving on to Saffron, I didn't have any major problems with him, but he felt a bit... basic. He wasn't bland, but his naiveté got pretty annoying and I wasn't very invested in him. I was empathetic when bad things happened to him, but that's about as far as it went for me.

There were times where I liked the writing, but other times it felt very inconsistent. The author oscillated between contrived, indulgent prose to more palatable prose pretty frequently, which kept taking me out of the story.

The plot itself was actually pretty intriguing, minus a few moments where I had to suspend my disbelief a bit, but it wasn't that bad. The ending left me feeling really gutted because it's not satisfying or happy, but I appreciated the amount of emotion it got out of me. I hope Cylvan and Saffron's power dynamic becomes more balanced in future instalments, because that was one thing that kept making me uncomfortable.

But bear in mind that 3 stars is still a good rating for me, and—sans that stuff I mentioned above, of course—I still did end up enjoying the actual story quite a bit!

Format read: ebook (Kindle Unlimited)
Reading time: 7+ unfortunate hours
Tags: fantasy (folklore), lgbtq+, historical (ish), enemies-to-lovers
Own a copy: no
Reread likelihood: 0/10

The curse of the bad KU books strikes again.... how are there so many 4 and 5 star reviews for this story is beyond me.

This book had an interesting premise, but it got lost within the first few chapters as too many unrelated subplots crowded the scene. Was this book about a murdering wolf? Was it about Saffron's desire to remain in fairyland? Was it about Cylvan's wish to protect himself from enchantments? Or maybe it was about the evil High Fey who are bent on torturing Saffron (for some unknown reason). Honestly, I wouldn't be able to tell you since there were so many loose ends and unexplained events.

I'm convinced that this book was written in a spiral notebook while the author sat at the back of a school bus en route for high school. There was nothing remotely interesting about the writing, the characters were flat and had the personalities of cardboard boxes, and the editing was non-existing.

Characters
Saffron is the most offending character and, sadly, he's also the MC. He sounded and acted like a 13 year old girl who giggled constantly and whose only response to anything was to say ohhh. Fascinating. He is such an immense airhead that he is utterly unable to accomplish anything as soon as Cylvan is anywhere near him. With Cylvan, Saffron conveniently forgets about his dead friends, the curse, Cylvan's threats, and all the bad fey because he's in loveinsert googly eyes. Saffron is constantly abused by the fey and his fellow humans, because reasons, and yet, he never actually does anything to fight back or to better his situation. He could have talked to his fey patron, Luvon (although he was borderline creepy if truth be told), or even to his ‘mother hen,' but no, Saffron preferred to wallow in self-pity and let himself be relentlessly bullied for no real reason.

Then there's Cylvan. He's one of the High Fey, but he's a special kind of High Fey (because of course). His mother is a... uh... something other than fey or human, and his dads are the kings of fairyland. Cool. He's so special that in fact, he does a complete 180 and goes from wanting to rip Saffron's tongue out to shoving his own down Saffron's throat with little to no logical reason as to why. Why does Cylvan suddenly trust Saffron, even though Saffron clearly betrayed him in the first few chapters? Because love. Why is he the meanest creature in school EXCEPT with Saffron, who is, for all intents and purposes, a useless simp? You guessed it, love. Does any of this makes sense? Of course not. Cylvan is such a walking caricature, I couldn't take him seriously. You know how in Howl's Moving Castle (the movie), Howl is an absolute baby when his hair gets messed up? That was cute and made sense for his character, but take that reaction and multiply it by 5000 and you get Cylvan. He's supposed to be this fearsome fey who can eviscerate you with one swipe of his claws, yet he flails around dramatically and pouts when Saffron is in the vicinity. Cylvan isn't cute; he's just ridiculous.

As if these characters weren't bad enough, the author felt the need to play Woke Roulette throughout the story with all the others. Every time a new character appeared, it was always referred to as “they” because, you know, we can't offend FICITONAL PEOPLE by misgendering them. Sure, it was relevant in some cases, like with Arrow, who is obviously set up to be nonbinary, but are all characters supposed to be NB? This way of writing was really confusing at times and made me roll my eyes way too many times to count. (N.B.: before anyone picks this section out of my review to accuse me of all sorts of untrue sentiments, I'll have you know that I read almost exclusively LGBTQ+ narratives. It is my preferred literature, especially when combined with SFF and historical fiction. That being said, authors can't just play roulette or gender bingo to satisfy 2022 expectations... the story loses all credibility.)

Anachronisms (buckle up, there are many)
Speaking of which, anachronisms also damage credibility. Being from North America, I learned in school very early on that tobacco grows exclusively in this part of the world. This is why golden age explorers brought back tobacco from the Americas to Europe to introduce it to their lands. Why, then, does Saffron go into the woods, in the middle of Ireland, to collect wild tobacco? This is a mistake that could have been avoided with just 5 seconds of research on Google. The same goes for the presence of wild marijuana in Ireland. No. Just no. Also, why the heck would you need to include pot in a story about fairies? Ridiculous.

Then, there's the issue with the clothing and accessories. Can we just take a second to appreciate the absolute nonsense of having vaguely romantic clothing (1800s) and combining it with what is meant to be a Celtic pagan society of the 5th century? Again, 5 seconds on Google would have told the author that Imbolc and other festivals were actively celebrated PRE-Norman Conquest (1066), and that short capes, frilly blouses, and tight pants just aren't period-accurate in the slightest. My other huge gripe with the clothing is the ridiculousness of Cylvan having pierced nipples. Come. On. No, I refuse to accept this book as anything other than fairy kink/fetish disguised as historical fiction.

Guys, ever heard of Baba Yaga? Yeah, that one, the SLAVIC character most well known through Polish and Russian folklore. WHY in god's name is she in Ireland? There are tons of Celtic folkloric characters that could have been used instead, but no, we have to stick a Slavonic one whose (very Irish) human name is Nora... I'm so offended by her presence in this story, it's not even funny.

Finally, there's the issue of language. There are way too many modern words and slang to befit the period. It's not hard to avoid modern language in order to maintain the illusion of the location and time the story takes place.

Conclusion
In a nutshell, don't let yourself be drawn in by pretty covers and high ratings on GoodReads. I saw that the author commented that this is going to be an eight-book series and I nearly choked on the spot. What kind of plot can be stretched out so thinly over 8 books?? This isn't exactly Game of Thrones-level of complexity. All I can say is that I (obviously) won't be continuing with this series.

Tl;dr: Please, for the love of all that is holy, do some research before including it in your book(s). It's not that hard, and it will increase the book's worth tenfold.