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I got this out the Library after seeing it reviewed in Somewhere For Us and it wasn’t until I opened it to read on the plane that I realised this is the third part of a trilogy – but I dived in anyway and I think the book still worked without having read to earlier parts to the trilogy.
This historical fantasy is not really a genre that I would normally go for, but I allowed myself to be emersed in this world.
A world dominated by women, focused on a Queen and her female warrior lover – there are a few male characters but their roles are only are the margins of the story.
The setting is vaguely medieval – there is lots of sword fighting but at times guns and early canons appear.
The backdrop is a mix of revolution and colonial politics, and some of that creaked a bit.
The story flows from moments of myths and spells, to really graphic violence, to intense love making, and back again without really pausing for breath.
At times it is heavy with detail and I often found myself speed reading and even skipping pages as there was so much scene setting that did little to advance the plot – at close to 600 pages of small print I think you could have trimmed it by at least a third without losing anything of substance.
