2025 romantic fantasy, first of a new series. Felix is the young,
widowed Archduke, cowed by his family and waiting to be murdered in
the pursuit of power, until he suddenly realises that there's nobody
left that he cares about to be hurt if he runs away. Meanwhile, the
villainous Queen Saskia seems to have the one kingdom where his family
can't reach him…
I've started a couple of books recently that I haven't yet
finished because of a lack of enthusiasm, but this one pulled me in
straight away. Felix has been abused since childhood and never been
allowed to reach a position where he might learn about governance or
assert his own power; Saskia saw her parents murdered by her usurping
uncle, then took back the kingdom with sorcery, but now has to juggle
its defences and her unreliable allies when she'd really rather spend
time developing new magics. Each of them, but Saskia in particular,
has to keep up a façade of power and confidence, but never too much…
When Felix shows up, planning to announce his identity and throw
himself on her mercy, she immediately drags him into the job she most
needs done, being the Dark Wizard who can organise her library. As
time goes on and Felix realises just how much the Archduke is her
primary foe (or at least the things done in the Archduke's name) he
decides to keep up the pretence. After all, he may not be a Dark
Wizard, but he does know books. And slowly sparks begin to fly…
A fair bit of modern fiction tries to have just the "good bits", the
emotional payoffs that for me only have real weight if they're
preceded by reasons to care about them. (In other words, "save the
cat"; get me to think of your protagonist as a good person whom I want
to see succeed, before you ask me to cheer for their success.) But
here Burgis nails something rather harder: we come to appreciate the
protagonists' past suffering without the long passages of
unpleasantness that are for me the other way this trick can fail, and
both our protagonists are grown-up enough that even when the Big
Revelation of Felix's identity hits it's a matter of taking a bit of
time to think things over rather than making irrevocable decisions on
the spur of the moment.
This is the first book of a planned trilogy, and the setup for the
second one is obvious, both in establishing the lead couple and in
arranging some of the major events. But as a side effect, it's
pleasing to see that not everything comes instantly right the moment
the leads agree that they love each other: not only are there things
to be resolved within this book, but at the end there are still real
problems for them to face, and they will face them together.
Unless I read many truly amazing things between now and December, this
will be one of my books of the year.