Thanks to NetGalley and Berkley Publishing Group | Ace for the ARC. It hasn’t affected the contents of my review.
This book should not have worked! But, it really did. At least for me.
This is an enemies to lovers slow burn romance set in an alternate Earth where magic is real. (Actual, real enemies, mind you, not just rivals or people who are annoyed at each other.) Aurienne is a gifted healer in an order of healers who is contacted by Osric, an eeeevil (but handsome and roguish) assassin, who has a fatal ailment to do with his magic that only Aurienne has a hope of curing (and it’s a very very small hope at that). She does not want to help him AT ALL but is ordered to after he makes an obscenely large donation to their Order, even though his only hope of a cure is based on folklore and fairytales, and is very unscientific (Aurienne frowns on non-evidence based magical healing). Osric is incorrigible and Aurienne is orderly and rule-following. Of course they are going to fall in love.
I really only have one main criticism, and the rest is just going to be a YMMV kind of thing. My criticism is that it is STUNNINGLY unclear when and why this is all taking place, aka the worldbuilding. This is a world with electricity but people still wear suits of armor?? They have antibiotics but also medieval type places like brothels and castles and public houses? It’s an alternate history world with magic*, where places like London and such still exist, but then there’s new places and England is split into Tiendoms? (ten kingdoms) It’s all very much unexplained. And yet, the central relationship, and the main plot points are all very clearly on the page, so in a sense the faffery surrounding the worldbuilding almost doesn’t matter (ALMOST).
*I highlighted several instances of language that makes no sense outside of our world, for instance the phrase “crime-scene chic” and certain body parts being called “Thoughts and Prayers” (in a world with no guns??). But those might be gone in the final version, I don’t know.
I feel where this book is really going to succeed or fail for people is the voice. It is very informal, at times vulgar, and has a sense of humor that is extremely specific. This very much worked on me, and I laughed out loud multiple times over the course of the book. Most of my highlights were things that had me giggling. But it also has this sweet heart underneath all the name-calling and ribald jokery. I really believed it at the end when both people had realized they had feelings for the other; it made me go “Awwwwww”.
Here are some examples of the language (again, ARC copy, subject to change):
“There is some family,” said Mrs. Parson. “Father from the Danelaw, mother from Tamazgha. Both presently in London. No debts to speak of; she’s rather well-off. Kidnap would, of course, always be an option.”
“A classic,” said Osric.“More whinging than Aurienne had expected from a Fyren. Weren’t they meant to be rugged killers? This specimen had the fortitude of a wet quiche.”
“I detest operating in this improvisatory manner”—”just titting about the countryside without a plan—”
Mordaunt, seized with sudden liveliness, leapt to Aurienne’s side. “Let’s tit about. I love titting about.”“He was a Fine Specimen in the way an abscess might be a Fine Specimen; the best, most shapely, most beautiful abscess in the world still brimmed with foulness and ought to be incised and drained.”
“Osric noticed that, under Patient Name, she had inserted an alias, which was fine, but that the alias was U. Ganglion, which offended him.”
And I had a lot more than that! I got my copy months and months ago, so the final copy might very well be a lot more polished. I guess I’ll see! Because I have this coming in a subscription box next month. For me, the charms of this book vastly outweighed the things that bothered me. But that is the reason it’s not getting five stars, because I kept getting the urge to sit down with a red pen and fix things.
If you like banter, antagonism, scatological humor, inexplicable worldbuilding, and animals, this might be a book for you.