Just based on the number of times I've seen it recommended, I think this might be Somerville's best-loved book. I've owned it for a while and decided I was finally in the mood to read it.

When I start reading e-books, I usually dive right in without bothering to check their descriptions or genres. I thought at first that this was m/m fantasy romance. Sixty pages in, I decided I needed to reset my expectations, because Kei and Arman hadn't even met yet. Plus, the book's earliest (and, for the next several hundred pages, only) sex scenes involved Kei and Arman with other people. Now that I've read the whole thing, I think it might best be called fantasy (epic fantasy?) with strong m/m romantic aspects.

Arman is a general in the Prijian Empire, ordered to begin the invasion of northern Darshian – the Prij have already conquered southern Darshian. Kei is a healer in the small village of Ai-Albon, in northern Darshian. Both men view each others' peoples as savages. To Kei, the Prij are greedy, war-like, and stupidly superstitious. To Arman, the Darshianese are simple, weak, and inferior. With time, they might even be grateful to their Prijian invaders, once they learn how superior the Prijian Empire is.

When Kei is made one of the Darshianese hostages and assigned to be a slave in Arman's household, the two men gradually learn more about each other and even become friends. However, they're still on opposite sides of a war, and their friendship is a fragile and complicated thing. Kei's people have good cause to hate Arman's, and Arman's people have the power of life and death over the Darshianese hostages.

I am the kind of person who stresses out over the lives of characters I care about. This book stressed me out so much, and there were times when I had to take a break because I was afraid to see how things were going to turn out. For readers who are like me, here's a bit of reassurance: yes, the ending is a happy one.

Although I called this fantasy fiction, the fantasy aspects are very light. The Prijian Empire and Darshian both have what appears to be a fairly high percentage of infertile people, so both societies are very concerned with fertility and successful births. Among the Darshianese, some of these “infertiles” have gifts, like being able to move things with their minds or speak telepathically. The Prij view tales of Darshianese gifts as fantastic stories. At least in this book, no Prijian infertiles are gifted.

This is a very long, slow-paced book, and it takes a while for events to move forward. Sometimes I noticed the length and felt vaguely like certain parts of the story could have been condensed, and sometimes I sank into the story and barely noticed how long it was. I was a little impatient with how long it took for Arman and Kei to finally meet, but I appreciated their slow-building relationship. At the time Kei was forced to be a part of Arman's household, Arman was filled with grief and hatred. Their friendship and the eventual hints of attraction they felt for each other were complicated by their respective positions. It was wonderful, intense, emotional stuff. I'm a fan of slow-developing relationships and romance, and this book gave me that in spades.

There were times when the story went outside my comfort zone. For example, the relationship between Kei, Reji, and Arman bothered me for a while. When reading romance, I prefer it when the characters are emotionally and physically involved with one person. After Kei and Arman became a couple, I wasn't sure how things were going to go. Early on, some of Reji's comments made me think that he was perhaps more content to have a long-term relationship with Kei than Kei realized, and I dreaded the “break up” scene.

It went better than I expected, but it bothered me that Kei viewed Reji as the lover he no longer had sex with and Arman as the lover he did. I saw it as unfair to both Reji and Arman, although they mostly seemed fine with that setup. I wanted Reji to be able to move on, and I wanted Arman to know he had a lover who cared for him and would never leave him for someone else. After the years Arman spent married to Mayl, I felt he needed that. All of this was dealt with in a way that worked better for me by the end, but, like everything else, it took a while.

Lots of things went more smoothly than I would have expected. This is not exactly a complaint, but I did spend a good portion of the book expecting horrible things that never happened. I tensed up before Kei's “break up” with Reji, before the trial at Ai-Darbin, and all throughout the events at the end. I won't say that everything was resolved easily, but it did all go much more smoothly than I expected, which left me feeling kind of...disappointed? Which is weird, because it's not like I wanted the characters to suffer more.

Probably my biggest complaint about this book was how black-and-white some things were. The Prijian Empire was warlike, superstitious, and arrogant. I struggle to think of a single good to say about it. Kei, a hostage and slave, had no reason to like it, and even Arman didn't seem to like anything about his home country besides Loke, his friend and servant, and Karus, his teacher. Darshian, meanwhile, was positively presented. It wasn't 100% perfect, but it was definitely better than the Prijian Empire, to the point that several Prij wanted to move there by the end.

I had similar issues with the way Mayl was depicted. At first, I thought she might end up being a more nuanced character. I thought her and Arman's marriage had started off well and then soured, but later it was confirmed that Arman had dreaded his marriage to Mayl right from the start. There was never any attempt to present motivations for her behavior, beyond “she's a horrible person.” Considering the very balanced way in which Arman was characterized, this bugged me. I didn't necessarily need Mayl to be likable, I just wanted her not to be such a flat character.

All in all, I enjoyed this book and look forward to reading more of this series. I loved these characters and am a little sad that Book 2 jumps 16 years into the future, but I'm hoping that the focus on Karik will allow for a more balanced look at both Prijian and Darshianese societies.

Additional Comments:

This was not an error-free book. There were occasional typos and missing words. They came up often enough that I felt I should mention it, but not so often that they interfered with my enjoyment of the story.

 

(Original review, with read-alikes, posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)

I wish I could finish this before I leave for work, but that's not going to happen. I'm trying to decide whether I should read some more this morning or stop while it's marginally bearable.

 

The last 200 pages or so have been really good, and I've made it past most of the moments that were stressing me out. My biggest concern now is whether the ending is going to be happy or bittersweet. I want these characters to be happy.

I hate how slow my reading speed is anymore. I hope it doesn't take me until April or longer to finish this, because my e-book TBR continues to grow and I don't like reading two books in the same format at once.

 

This book's emotional roller coaster is painful, and I'm a little terrified of how it's all going to end. Kei and Arman are on opposite sides of a war. Kei's people hate Arman, and Arman's people think Kei's people are barbarians. At some point, Kei is going to meet back up with Reji, his lover, and have what will probably be a very difficult conversation. Even if it goes well, it's not like his relationship with Arman will magically become all happiness and light.

 

Arman's about to be tried for a public execution he ordered earlier in the book. I'm sure he'll spend the whole thing mentally flogging himself, as the villagers verbally flog him and possibly throw stuff at him.

 

I think I may need to pick something fluffy to read on the side.

I first read this one when it was still available free from the author's website. It is the third book in the Darshain Tales series and follows Karik who was a baby in the first book (Kei's Gift) and a teen in the second (Falling From the Tree), the latter also follows him.

 

I'm not really sure why I re-read this one instead of going back and starting with Kei's Gift. After reading this one, I am thinking about going back and re-reading the first two as well.

 

There are so many things that could be avoided if Karik and Romi would just really talk to each other: Romi assuming that Karik is cheating on Jes's mother with Soza, Karik thinking Romi had said something negative about Jes and her mothers. The list goes on, but it all boils down to Soza being an ass and making them think negatively about each other. All it takes is a few words.

On the one hand I really liked the book. On the other hand, it's not very good.

Kei is the type of character I really love. He's upbeat and fun to be around and hard to intimidate, which is why when he is beaten down it's so damn heart-breaking. Even the most positive person can be seriously harmed, and he is. Boy, is he ever. Watching him struggle with his trauma and his injured gift was the highlight of the book and made up for a lot of the books flaws. And boy, were there flaws.

The biggest flaw the book has is that it is very black and white. The bad guys are bad. They're not just bad, they're evil. Evil evil evil. Arman's wife is so evil that I ended up feeling sorry for her. After all, she's married to a husband who hates her so much that the only way he could get through their wedding was by being drunk off his ass. I definitely could not blame her when she found a lover outside of her marriage--after all Arman wasn't having sex with her and her husband's family didn't have an heir for the next generation. (Arman's older brother having not done his familial duty either). No doubt she'd been getting a ton of pressure about not having kids while he was out with the Army. Perhaps sensing that her readers would be somewhat sympathetic to Mayl the author then proceeded to make her as evil as possible. Not only is she sadistic to Kei, she's a terrible mother who deserved to have her newborn infant taken from her. This, naturally, means that everything that happens to her is totally, 100% deserved. Evil.

The queen is just as bad, seemingly confusing 'political hostage' with 'slave'. It's emphasized again and again that the hostages will be killed and that there cannot be any bargaining to save them because the bad guys will kill them out of hand... which makes me question why the bad guys even took hostages in the first place. Hostages are pawns, they are supposed to be used as bargaining chips. That's the entire point of taking hostages! This isn't some crazy man in a bunker taking a kid hostage, this is a conquering nation supposedly making a calculated move. Also, despite Arman supposedly being a favorite of the queen he can't get any sort of accommodation. When he brings up the fact that several of the hostages had been raped and complains about their treatment she completely dismisses it and makes no effort to show her favoritism, despite the fact that she loves him as a general.

Everything the Darshia do is good, aside from one village which is bad. Bad bad bad. Everything is perfect. They're a democracy. Everyone is equal. No titles are used (except when they are). No child is abused or orphaned because they're immediately adopted by someone else in their clan. Their medicine is highly developed. They have such massively powerful gifts that I am astounded that they let Southern Darshia be conquered twenty years before. They win so easily that I'm actually angry. They would invade in order to free 89 hostages, but allowed THEIR ENTIRE SOUTH to be captured by the bad guys for twenty years because they were afraid to hurt anyone?? Are you kidding me? In the book this is considered perfectly justified, when in fact it is really bizarre.

Another thing that really bothered me was how things had to be reiterated again and again. I nearly threw my tablet across the room when Arman apologized for the tenth or eleventh time for taking people hostage. Yes, we get it, you're sorry. Now shut up about it and move on. Every single decision had to be gone over in excruciating detail.First Kei decides to go on the mission to rescue the hostages... then he has to convince Arman to allow him to go... then they have to convince his best friend... then they have to convince one of the Rulers... then they have to convince his army friend.... etc. After the best friend the conversations should have been summarized, and they weren't. That was one example. I'm not even going to get to Arman visiting every single village and apologizing over and over again. The editor should have taken an ax to the story and hacked off about 20,000 words.

It got to the point were I started to forget some of the more touching scenes with Kei's struggle. I had to go back to reread them in order to keep my interest in the story. All the details and the one-sided conflict and the black and white world really distracted from the romance. This was a book in which Tell, not Show should have been applied.