Sisters of Fire and Fury, Laura Bates

Book Title: Sisters of Fire and Fury

Author: Laura Bates

Series: Sisters of Sword and Shadow #2

Date Started: January 18th  2025

Date Completed: January 27th 2025

Genres: Fantasy, Historical, Adventure, Action, Romance

Quality Rating: Five Stars

Enjoyment Rating: Five Star

Final Rating: Five Stars

Review:

My kind of romance, my kind of thriller, my kind of everything really. Heart-pounding action, heartwarming love, and heart-burning fury. When I realised it was the last few pages, I didn't want it to end.

I enjoyed the first book, but I feel like I understood the second book more. It's so well done, so much fun but so political and real - the balance is so well crafted. I remember reading an interview with Derek Landy (author of the Skulduggery Pleasant series, and one of the most influential writers of my childhood) where he was talking about action and violence involving young characters. He spoke about how important it was to him to show that action is exciting but getting hurt, well, hurts. It's scary even with a weapon in your hand, and no one is invincible. There's a handful of moments in Sisters of Fire and Fury where I was reminded of that and impressed by how Laura Bates doesn't glorify the fantasy of female knights - glorious as it is - because they are hurt, they are scared. They are protecting not conquering.

I speak a lot about adaptations around retellings and between mediums, and if I ever had to teach a class on it, I think this would have to be one of the examples. The first book was very loose with its inspiration, while this one meets it head on, but with so much love for the original myths of King Arthur. Instead of strictly rewriting it or giving it a click-bait 'twist, the story is instead allowed to grow with new opportunities that the original myth never saw. It's modernised through the acknowledgement of how our morality system and culture has evolved, and by seeing where that new perspective leads us.

The themes in these books feel so true, so close, even if the rest is beautiful medieval fantasy. I'm grateful to have these books as a 20-something. I hope they're devoured by younger.

For She is Wrath, Emily Varga

Book Title: For She is Wrath

Author: Emily Varga

Date Started: January 5th  2025

Date Completed: January 18th 2025

Genres: Fantasy, Adventure

Quality Rating: Three Stars

Enjoyment Rating: Two Star

Final Rating: Two Stars

Review:

◆ Thank you to NetGalley for this ebook for review ◆

For the record, I put this book down at 51%. I was determined to get far enough into the story for Dania to start acting rather than just talking but, unfortunately, she'd sidestepped actually doing anything too many times for me. This book is very dramatic and grand in its idea of itself, but the actual encounters between characters are trivial. The protagonist builds things up in her prose but does very little to act on her threats when she gets the opportunity.

I really don't need to be told three to five times a chapter that Dania's ex-lover took advantage of her and betrayed her - that's made clear enough in the synopsis and first couple of sentences in the story. I didn't find the relationship flashbacks overly compelling in driving this part of the story (and I would bet that the book ends with them getting back together and it all being a big misunderstanding) but I still understand that you're using the enemies-to-lover trope reversed, please stop spamming the prose with it. This book would be 100 pages shorter and probably more tense for letting the reader draw their own conclusions if this detail wasn't written plainly every couple of pages.

In all fairness, I do think my opinion of the book ultimately suffered from expectations set by the marketing. I was expecting a fresh new take on this well-known trope with a rich magical system, but it ended up quite bland and didn't offer anything new to help me put with the YA narrator.

The Priory of the Orange Tree, Samantha Shannon

Book Title: The Priory of the Orange Tree

Author: Samantha Shannon

Series: The Roots of Chaos #1

Date Started: December 15th  2024

Date Completed: January 5th 2025

Genres: Fantasy, Adventure, Action

Quality Rating: Five Stars

Enjoyment Rating: Five Star

Final Rating: Five Stars

Review:

King Arthur, Theseus and Gilgamesh eat your heart out, this is a great epic of women in par with Le Guin and Zimmer Bradley. There is no explanation why women stand at the prow of so many intrinsic roles, they simply do - how liberating it is to experience a story like that.

Unsurprisingly, the worldbuilding is marvellous. Drawing inspiration from our world and mixing it with a generous helping of fantasy creates an entirely absorbing universe brimming with politics and magic, culture and conflict. The build-up to the final battle is what makes the ending truly impressive - I haven't been transfixed by a climax like that for ages.

Did it need to be that long? No, of course it didn't. But I have to admit, I enjoyed almost every page. You've got to give credit to Shannon for fully realising such a complex story in only one novel rather than cashing in on a trilogy (as this could easily have been). While you definitely feel the 800+ pages, the momentum is so consistent that you're more than satisfied letting it take its time.

The Priory of the Orange Tree is a complex story, but thoughtful too. It never passes omnipotent judgment on its characters or their part in its events. So much of the narrative explores the diametrically opposed beliefs and motivations of the different regions and nations, all tangled up in each other's lives and trying to make peace with what they want within it. Shannon lets the reader learn and fall in love as they wish, victories and defeats washing over them like real life. If you weren't sure of Samantha Shannon's storytelling prowess before this book, there's no denying it now.