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A book has to leave a mark for me to write a review. This duology left bite marks.
For fans of Uprooted by Naomi Novik or Year of the Witching by Alexis Henderson, The Shepherd King duology by Rachel Gillig is a blend of dark fantasy and hopeful romance. These books are set in a misty world where magic is a curse in your blood--unless you're one of the lucky few to own a Providence Card. The mist encroaches further and further each year. And there are monsters in the fog. The only hope for the kingdom is to unite the Providence deck, which will lift the fog and clear a centuries-old debt.
One Dark Window Overview
One Dark Window opens with Elspeth, infected with the curse of magic. She lives on the outskirts of town with her aunt and uncle, mostly keeps to herself, and avoids participating in the social lives of other nobility at all costs. Because if it's discovered that she's infected, it not just her, but her whole family that will be killed.
Elspeth begins the story as a broken, cold, reserved character. She's cautious, protective of her family, and prefers the safety of isolation. The one light in her life is her cousin, Ione, the sunshiny one.
Happily for me, this means that this book features one of my favorite tropes. Maybe you've heard the story where the Sunshine one loves the Grumpy one, but how about when the Grumpy one finds another Grumpy one and they both fall for each other despite their best attempts to remain cold, heartless grouches? It wrecks me every time.
Elspeth falls in with Ravyn and they do their best to out-distance, out-isolate, out-jerk each other. And still, they can't resist their hearts thawing as they gradually uncover the kingdom's secrets. Wrapped up in mystery, shifting loyalties, and prophecy, Elspeth and Ravyn race to undo not just their own curse, but the whole kingdom's curse.
The conspirators are blocked at every turn by the king, his brutish heir, and the royal Destriers, essentially a police force tasked with routing out those who show signs of magic. And to make matters worse, Ione, the sunshiny cousin, makes marriage arrangements with the heir to the throne. She thinks she'll be able to temper the prince's aggression and help rule the kingdom with kindness.
One Dark Window Spoilers
Elspeth's special magic is that she's got a monster in her head. The nature of that monster is not known until the very end of the book, but suffice it to say, he's dangerous. The monster gives her power, though. When she calls upon the monster, he makes her stronger, faster, able to defend herself. Though, ever time, there's a price to pay--he comes closer to the surface of her mind. Each time she uses the monster's power, Elspeth looses a bit of herself, loses a bit of control.
By the end, she's forced to give herself over to him entirely, or else die, and forfeit everything she and Ravyn have fought for.
And so...
Two Twisted Crowns Overview
Two Twisted Crowns follows Ione and Elm. Elspeth and Ravyn still feature in this book, but the focus has shifted to Elspeth's cousin. Sunshiny Ione has been reduced to a shell of herself by one of the Providence cards. The Maiden card has granted Ione perfect physical beauty, but scraped out her soul and made her incapable of feeling any emotions. She's less of a hassle to her betrothed this way, so he's hidden the Maiden card and left her an unfeeling statue of her former self.
Elm, the disappointing second-born prince, is secretly an ally to Ravyn and Elspeth. After the events of One Dark Window, the heir to the throne is on his deathbed, and Elm must walk on eggshells to convince everyone that he is loyal to his father. Elm is conflicted: he doesn't want to be king, but if his older brother recovers, the kingdom will have to endure another generation of tyranny.
Elm and Ione work together in the shadows to try to rid her of the Maiden's influence. And wouldn't you know it, it's another Grumpy x Grumpy pairing, and I love them so much.
At first, I was disappointed to lose Elspeth and Ravyn as the main focus, but truly, Elm and Ione deserved their own story. They both grow so much as people and I just want them to be happy. ðŸ˜
The plot is split between three points of view: Elm's attempts to help Ione, Ravyn's quest to secure the last Providence card that will unite the deck, and brief scenes from Elspeth's point of view, trapped inside the mind of the monster. These three POVs intertwine in a perfectly paced narrative. At each shift, I found myself saying "No! I want to hear more about Elm!" or "No! I want to hear more about Ravyn!" Every chapter drags you along and makes it impossible to stop thinking about the story.
Two Twisted Crowns Spoilers
I won't get into specifics here, don't worry. I just wanted to say that the ending was so satisfying. It ended on such a hopeful, wholesome tone, and everything was tied up so perfectly. It may not sound like a spoiler, but there were may places in these books where a happy ending didn't seem possible. If you're the kind of reader where a tragic ending just doesn't work for you, don't skip these books! They're dark. They're brutal. But there's an underlying hopefulness and optimism throughout.
Any criticisms?
There were a few points, particularly in the second book, where I felt like the plot was a bit... plotty. Like, some things were resolved too quickly, or some things seemed to happen simply because they needed to happen. But if they'd been set up and fleshed out, the book would have been twice as long.
As an example: (SPOILERS for Two Twisted Crowns)
When we open on Elspeth, she appears to be completely gone. Possibly dead. We hold out hope, along with Ravyn, that he'll be able to retrieve her somehow. He hopes that she's just stuck in the mind of the monster and that she's not really dead. This really drove the tension in the early parts of the book and made my heart ache for Ravyn. A few chapters in, though, the monster allows Ravyn to make mental contact with Elspeth, and that tension dissolves. Then the monster says that Ravyn cannot talk with her again because it will be a shock to her system to not be in control of her own body. But it doesn't really come up again. Elspeth and Ravyn talk pretty regularly after that, and Elspeth doesn't every seem too traumatized by the monster's control. It's a sequence that makes me wonder if there were chapters that had to be cut out for word count's sake.
In the end, I was perfectly ok with those "plotty" aspects because everything else was so, so good.
What did you think of this series? Comment below!
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