Be gay, fuck empires seems to be 2021’s motto with some of my most anticipated releases being The Unbroken by C.L. Clark, The Jasmine Throne by Tasha Suri and She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker Chan.

• Genre: Fantasy
• Age group: Adult
• Pub. date: March 23rd 2021
• Format: Ebook – thanks to Orbit for the ARC, this review reflects my honest thoughts
• Pages: 464
• Goodreads link

Touraine is a soldier. Stolen as a child and raised to kill and die for the empire, her only loyalty is to her fellow conscripts. But now, her company has been sent back to her homeland to stop a rebellion, and the ties of blood may be stronger than she thought.

Luca needs a turncoat. Someone desperate enough to tiptoe the bayonet’s edge between treason and orders. Someone who can sway the rebels toward peace, while Luca focuses on what really matters: getting her uncle off her throne.

Through assassinations and massacres, in bedrooms and war rooms, Touraine and Luca will haggle over the price of a nation. But some things aren’t for sale.

I’ve been putting off this review because I feel like it deserves smart thoughtful analysis, because it’s a smart thoughtful book looking at complicated issues, but I just keep getting stuck on those arms, so:

First, to get this out of the way: Those ARMS!

That cover am I right? Raise your hands if you’re interested in this book because of those arms, I know I was. So I went in not knowing anything about the book other than buff sapphic lady on the cover. And I thought it might be like a fun campy book cause the only comparison I had was Gideon, nope. It is a very different kind of book, and one I personally enjoyed a lot more. There is a good amount of ladies thirsting over those arms, so I was not disappointed.

So what is the book actually like? Thirst aside?

It’s a very thoughtful, detailed look at colonialism, inspired by French colonialism in North Africa. The book is politics-heavy, and the main characters spend a lot of time dealing with how they feel about everything that’s going on. And I really liked how that played out, because neither Touraine nor Luca know really where they stand when the book begins and figuring that out is messy and complicated.

The story is set about a generation after Luca’s dad, leading the Balladairan empire, conquered the Qazāli land. Luca is here trying to prove her worth by quelling the local rebellion. Touraine is a Sand, an army conscript stolen as a child and raised to be a soldier. She hasn’t been back here since she was a child, and now she is torn between her loyalty to the empire and shadows of her past. They both struggle with their place in the empire and this colonial dynamic.

Luca and Touraine had an assigned role and initially, they weren’t really questioning it, and then things kept happening and challenging them. The ways they adapted often involved a lot of fuck-ups and was messy and very human. There were some points where this could’ve been interpreted as idiotball, but  I thought everything fit very well to the character’s conflicting motivations and loyalties. I liked their relationship too, they’re clearly drawn to each other, but there’s the whole power difference between them, and often working towards different goals. The world is queernorm, so they don’t get any trouble for both being women, and there are many sapphic couples in the story.

Touraine’s the star of the show, and I was with her all way, even when her choices were strange. But Luca is also very interesting because she starts off nice, and wanting to help and reform, but the more she came to terms with her motivations, the less I liked her.

As a side note, I really liked how much history was woven into the story, and how it tied in with the magic and lack thereof. Past conflicts still have real consequences in the present. I really liked the bits about the empire that fell before the Badelarian empire expanded, and I’d love to read more about that. What we do learn of the magic is very mysterious, and I’m into that.

I’m not sure if this is a problem of the book, or a feature of dealing with heavy complicated subjects and feelings, but it was a pretty slow read. Things are harsh often it seems like whatever the characters chose people would suffer. So I was in this odd place where I liked it whenever I read it, and thought the way it showed colonialism from different perspectives and everyone having their own goals and reasons was very smart, but I didn’t find myself picking it up that easily.

All in all I strongly recommend this and I think it’s going to be among my favorites of the year, it’s really stuck with me, with the caveat that it’s not a light easy read.

Recommended for: fans of historical fantasy with colonialist focus and buff women