I Just Read About That…

[LISTENED TO: August 2023] Protect the Prince

It had been a while since I listened t o Book One of this series.  I feel like a book holds up well if you can get caught right up with the action without needing any kind of refresher.  And so it was with this.

The book picks up about six months after the events of Book 1.  Evie is now Queen Everleigh.  And she is slowly coping with her new role.

The first section of the book is called The First Assassination Attempt.

Everleigh has announced her first royal meeting of the royal families and assorted other important people. The royal families suck and are always conniving for something.  And before she can even begin speaking to them, one of the men steps up and tries to undermine her authority.  Among other things he suggests that his son should accompany her on her upcoming  trip abroad (which would more or less solidify them as a dating and soon to be married couple).

Everleigh is thrown off at first but soon regains her composure long enough to walk among the royals and reminding them of all of the ways they have insulted her to her face in the past.

But before she can savor even this minor victory, an assassin arrives with poison.  But Everleigh can smell poison and does not take the bait.  Soon enough they are fighting and when the assassin (who was sent by her nemesis Maven) realizes that there is no way out for her, she takes her own life rather than be captured.

I thought that the first book was pretty well fleshed out, but there is a ton of backstory in this book.  We learn all about the assassination of Everleigh’s parents and we get a sense of why Maven and her family want Everleigh dead.

The bulk of the book is set in Andvari (this is the trip the nobleman wanted his son to go on).  Evie plans to negotiate a pact with Andvari to join together against their enemies.  But the King has a stipulation before signing–one that will make both countries stronger while destroying the personal happiness of about half a dozen people.  But we all know that kings and queens must put duty before personal happiness.

The book also allows us to learn a lot of backstory about the Andvarians, particularly Lucas Sullivan.  We knew that Lucas was a bastard son of the King, but we did not know that his mother Dahlia, was a favored woman of the throne.  She sits at the King’s right hand.  But she has never married him (the queen is dead).  When Evie has a moment alone, she asks whey and Dahlia says she doesn’t want any of the responsibility of being queen, especially since she more or less has all of that power anyhow.

The section title is The Second Assassination Attempt, so we know something is going  to happen.  And Evie can sense that someone in the room wants to kill her.  This is especially unfortunate because literally everyone in Andvari hates her so it could be anyone.

The Andvarians have not forgiven Evie for the murder that her cousin caused.  Even though Evie fought against her cousin, it was still a Blair woman who murdered the King’s son.

Things start to settle down as Evie meets with important people in Andvari.  And there’s some terrific moments when Sullivan’s niece Gemma comes on the scene.  She loves Evie because Evie saved her life during the massacre.  And Gemma will do anything for her, including introducing Evie to the gargoyles who look especially manacling and wicked.  Gemma is best friends with one of the gargoyles, Grimly, and soon Evie had a protector in the fearsome stone beast who acts adorably like a puppy dog.

There is of course a second assassination attempt–this one more dangerous than the first.  And there is some other potential collateral damage in this one.

There is also a third assassination attempt–one that reveals a ton of secrets and one that causes a potentially unfixable rift in Andvari.

With this book so fresh in my mind, I have some complaints about this book which I enjoyed overall.

I only have the audiobook, so I can’t find exact quotes.  I am paraphrasing, which I hate doing, but there it is.

Jennifer Estep needs to have fewer characters in a scene because she continually feels the need to mention all of them.  With sentences like “I looked over at Serilda, Cho, Paloma, Sullivan and Gemma.”  Followed soon by something like “I sat at the table with Paloma, Cho, Serilda, Sullivan and the King” while at the other table sat “this one, this one this one and this one.” It just happens so much!

It was also weird to me that literally every character had the same “tell.”  Whenever anyone wants to touch something, but they can’t their outstretched hands clench into fists.  And, more often than that, when they don’t react to news, but something in their jaw tics.  I mean, no one in the story would ever be able to keep a secret, with all of the visible tells going on.

And I REALLY hate Evie’s insecurities.  This book would be like an hour shorter if we stopped hearing about how insecure Evie felt about being queen or her ability to do such and such or if her magic was up to snuff or whatever.  I mean, we get that she is insecure and not sure if she should really be queen, but we don’t need to be perpetually reminded of it.

Having said that, I really liked a lot of the story.  Despite that irritating part of Evie, she is a strong and powerful character with bad ass skills.  Plus, the intrigue was good.  The mystery was fun to decipher.  And the characters are nicely fleshed out.  I would have loved more of Paloma, who was definitely underutilized.  Actually, as were (to quote Estep, Serilda, Cho, and Xenia.  But I really like Helene and hope that she will be more prevalent in the next book.  In general I really like the secondary characters quite a lot.

Another weird thing is her use of the word fucking.  For the most part, this story feels like an old-fashioned word and sorcery story.  There’s no electricity or modern conveniences.  There’s absolutely nothing that makes this story “modern,” so it’s weird to have the queen say something like “you better fucking believe I’m going to.”  Or, even weirder, something like “Are you just going to fuck me and leave?”  It’s really, really jarring.

I’ve got one more compliant that contains a spoiler.  But that’s all I’ve got to say about the book, so you don’t need to read on if you don’t want this to be spoiled yet.

SPOILER:

The Evie and Sullivan “will they won’t they” was well established in book one.

It’s finally consummated in this book (although with an unintended result).  But the sex scene is so explicit.  Nothing that most people haven’t read elsewhere, but again, like with the “fucking” the scene is really rather explicitly jarring.  I mean, don’t get me wrong I’m happy for both oft hem that it was so good, but wow, it’s like a PG-13 movie that suddenly shows two characters completely naked in bed.