Unapologetic wish fulfillment.
Plot: Cin is a spice farmer in a small medieval village which worships a goddess that protects them from monsters. Every 15 years, heroes are selected by the goddess to protect the realm from the monsters, which creep in through portals across the world. Cin does not want to be a hero, she wants to live a quiet life with her family. This is complicated when, on the night before the ceremonial selection of the newest cast of heroes, she accidentally rescues a man who turns out to be one of those monsters. As it turns out, the goddess is not actually a goddess, and the monsters are not actually monsters, and Cin falls into an adventure to end the enslavement and imprisonment of non-humans by an evil witch. Shenanigans ensue.
This book is fun, funny, and has a lot of heart. It is also entirely unapologetic wish fulfillment. Cin is an expert bow-woman, despite being described as a farmer who likes lazy days and cooking. She’s also extremely savvy for a person who has never really travelled. Fallon is your quintessential alpha hero who, as appears to be mandatory for paranormal romances, falls instantly and irrevocably in love with the heroine through magic. He is also the strongest, handsomest, smartest guy and, of course, an expert lover.
The broader plot beats are your typical low fantasy story. This book is not trying to surprise you or keep you in suspense, it is trying to give you unadulterated pleasure.
There are some surprises, mostly to do with tone. For a very light, fluffy story with fun modern slang, there is a lot of pretty gruesome violence, morally gray at best decisions by our heroes, and surprisingly kinky BDSM scenes? These are not problems per se, but there are readers who reported this affecting their enjoyment of the story. I’m personally not a big fan of the “heroine who feels too embarrassed to consent and needs a hero to ‘take'” trope and there is also some deception involved to get the heroine naked, but I’d put it at like a 1.5/10 on the non-con scale.
Audio narration is excellent. Hazel Addison very much understood the assignment.