3 out of 5 stars

DNF 40%

E-book. 85 pages. Published March 31st 2020

Blurb:

More than jousting will determine whether love and loyalty wins…

Brien is a proud knight of Fenton castle, but his brash nature and say-it-as-it-is attitude push most people away. When his princess Eleanor returns with her wife, the festival preparations are almost ready when they receive news that their foreign in-laws insisted on a gift of more knights – will Brien make new friends or enemies? With a menial job to keep him in line, Brien is brought closer to a man who is out of his reach.

Devon is the stable master, but his confidence is only with the animals in his care. With the new faces arriving at the castle his anxieties rise when he finds out firsthand their opinions on half-Fae mingling with humans, let alone other knights. While trying to deny his feelings for Brien, will Devon be able to assert his rightful place in the castle?

The two of them work together for the festival’s success but the more time they spend together, Brien and Devon can’t deny their growing attraction. With the new knights proving troublesome, will the festival be a success? Or will the fun and games take a darker turn?

This series is intended for mature readers. It is a Steamy MM Fantasy Romance featuring explicit scenes and adult themes. 

Likes:

• Medieval/fantasy theme.
• The base idea is good.

Dislikes:

• Descriptions weren’t as good as they could have been.
• Could use a line editor.
• Could use beta readers.
• Needs more work to convey everything to the reader.
• Hard to keep all the Knights straight.

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DNF 40%

Despite the fact that I didn’t finish the book, it wasn’t bad. I’m just used to better quality. After I found myself putting the book down for the umpteenth time, I decided to cut my losses.

The overall plot is interesting. A knight and the stable master, one fully human, the other half-Fey. The book has a lot of medieval flair along with a dash of high fantasy, which is normally right up my alley.

Unfortunately, the writing needs work. I do feel like the author knows what’s going on and has a solid idea of what the story is about. However, there can be a loss of information when the story gets translated from idea to written words, and it feels like that’s what happened here. The bones of the story are there, it just needs to be fleshed out.

A lack of description is probably the thing this book’s biggest problem. A little of that is physical description, but it’s more than that. I need a book to paint a picture in my mind. Use all five senses and ground the story firmly in a place. I got a good idea of the stables and the palace walls, but not of the bigger picture. I needed even a brief glimpse of the ecosystem existing within the castle, even if that ecosystem isn’t important to the story.

That bigger picture would have let me get closer to Brien. I feel like I don’t know him at all. He’s a knight, and kind, but I only see him when he’s around Devon, which is mostly in the stables. I can’t help being annoyed at how small a window I have into the world of the story, given that I know there’s so much more I’m not being shown.

To this end, I think a few good beta readers would help this story immensely. That could have pointed out that people might have trouble remembering which knight is which, since there are a lot of them. A good line editor would come in handy as well, to smooth out the clunky sentences and remove extra punctuation.

I’m giving the book 3 stars because it’s definitely not the worst self-published book I’ve tried to read, and I am more lenient with self-published stuff. But with so many better books out there, it simply wasn’t worth finishing.