*I was provided an arc by NetGalley in exchange for a review*

What initially drew me to this book was definitely the cover. It’s gorgeous. And I was really excited to start. But full disclosure, it’s a slow start. Slow enough that I struggled to push through at one point, but glad I did.

This fantasy romance follows Queen Lia and Conri, the Slave King. What I enjoyed is their interactions. They’re both well thought out characters and were fun to read.

I look forward to the next part of their journey.

The Orchid Throne by Jeffe Kennedy is a fantasy romance and Book 1 of The Forgotten Empires. This series is off to a good start with an interesting storyline and world that the author has created. I was very captivated by the characters and their nuances. Although slow at times, this is usual for a first book in the series so I didn’t mind all the details. A story full of political tension, magic, action and romance. I’m looking forward to the next in this series.

After the death of her father, Queen Euthalia continued to do her duties for the throne. She didn't agree with the way things were and when a dream leads her to believe that change is coming she readies herself.

Conri is fighting for a new world, to right the wrongs. He needs Lia's ring to overtake the man who is set on ruling for himself not everyone. Will he be able to do right by the people or is he doomed from the start?

This was intriguing. A bit slow int he beginning but i thought written in a way that you could visualize. I wasn't sure how Conri and Lia would get on together as they are polar opposites. I would be curious to see what happens in the next book. Good start to the series.

This book took a while for me to get into because the beginning was a bit slow. However, I found it a normal pace for a fantasy book. Not everything makes sense at the beginning and that is ok. I really enjoyed the romance aspect of the book as well. Fantasy romance is a small genre and I truly wish there were more of books like this. The book really picked up towards the end as everything finally came together and I can't wait for the next book in the series. It's worth a read if you are ok with a slow beginning and are ok with world building being slowly built up instead of massive info dumps. It's worth the payoff at the end. Also, the descriptions of things are beautiful. The lush descriptions match the beautiful cover. This is not a book to pick up if you want a fast read.

3.5 rating

I was excited to read The Orchid Throne. When I read the blurb, I thought to myself: “I am going to like this book.” I mean, it had the two genres I love the most: Fantasy and Romance. Now that I have read The Orchid Throne, I was a bit disappointed. It fell short of my expectations.

The Orchid Throne starts slowly. It creeps along. There were several times where I wanted to swipe to the end of a chapter because it was that slow. I understand that the author was world-building but still. Once Conri and Euthalia met, the plotline got going. By the end of the book, it was moving along quite nicely. But, the slowness of the first half of the book did put me off.

I wished that I could have connected with Euthalia more. But it was hard to. A big part of me not being able to connect with her was the usage of the royal Us, Me, We (etc.) as part of her dialogue. It drove me nuts reading that. I did like the glimpses of the woman underneath the facade, though. The woman that peeked through was a tough cookie. But that was overshadowed by the games she was forced to play.

I did like Conri. I felt that he was more fleshed out than Euthalia. He was upfront and honest with his end game. He wanted to kill the Emperor. He didn’t play games or deal with court intrigue. He wanted to get there and get it done. And in no way did he want anything to do with the prophecy.

I wish that more information was given on Ambrose, Sondra, and Tertulyn. I was fascinated with Ambrose, but so little information was provided about him. He was shrewd, and everything he did was part of a grand plan. Plus, he had a crow as a familiar, which I loved. Sondra was Conri’s right hand. She was a strong woman who had been through a lot in her life. It showed both mentally and physically. I liked how she brought Conri down a peg or two during the book. Tertulyn intrigued me. I have a couple of suspicions about her, but nothing was confirmed in this book. I can’t wait to see what the next book will bring with her!!

I will say that I have never had a favorite villain before. But the Emperor Robho might be one. He doesn’t make a physical appearance in the book, but his presence was always there. He was feared and hated by Conri and Euthalia. Euthalia feared his letters. Which makes me wonder, what will he be like in person? If his letters were enough to strike dread in Euthalia, the real deal must be terrifying. And I can’t wait to read it!!!

I wish more time had been spent explaining what the Abiding Ring did and why it was so crucial that Conri gets it. There was a primary blanket reason, but I believe that Ambrose is hiding something. I did find the ring fascinating. The way it responded to Ambrose was telling. As was the way it responded to Conri.

The romance angle of the book was “meh” for me. Conri and Euthalia did have some insane chemistry. But that didn’t translate to hot sex scenes. Unfortunately, the first sex scene was awkward and uncomfortable. That set the tone for me. The rest of the sexual encounters seemed the same way for me.

I liked the fantasy angle of the book. But a lot of what was going on with Euthalia was released too late. But to keep it until the end of the book? I didn’t like that.

The end of The Orchid Throne was exciting. None of the storylines were ended. I am interested in what will go in book 2.

This is my fair and honest review in return for this ARC. I am not a magic/wizard kinda woman but this sounded interesting so I gave it a go. Now I can't wait for part 2!!! Wow, really loved the writing and story and characters and...well, EVERYTHING.

It was a bit of a battle to get through, it was really dragging for most of the book until the very end. That's where we learn a bit more about Lia and that's when thing got super interesting especially about who she really is.

It honestly felt like not a whole lot was going on. I did like Kennedy's writing style, but dragged at slow pace for most of the book. The book is littered with so much detail about their world and the different empires, but it didn't necessarily help with the plot development. I would have love to see more of magical and fantasy side of the story. I, personally, didn't mind the romance aspect, but there honestly was much of one either. Just at the tail end of the story.

It's a HFN for Lia and Con since everything is very new between them. I wanted to love this book so much, but it wasn't for me.

The Orchid Throne is the first book in a new series by Ms. Jeffe
Kennedy, fantasy author extraordinaire. And for a first book, it
definitely delivers in the worldbuilding, overarching theme and of
course characters that readers can get on board with. The Orchid
Throne, being a first book, usually carries a heavy burden of making
sure that the reader will be back for the next books in the series.
Be not afraid because you will be looking for that next one as soon as
you get a whiff of its availability!

Readers are first introduced to the person sitting on The Orchid
Throne, the queen of Calanthe, Euthalia. Oh and she also happens to
have been affianced to the Imperial Emperor, the destroyer of all
kingdoms, Anure. It wasn't her idea, she was a child then but her
father had to to keep their own kingdom safe from said evil emperor.
The next chapter introduces us to the next protagonist, who was
currently destroying another kingdom annexed by Anure and is now being
"liberated" from him by none other than Conir. Known as The King of
Slaves, Conir along with his band of not so merry men, have escaped
from slavery and has vowed to destroy the emperor at all cost. They
had nothing to lose for everything they were and everything they had,
especially family, was taken away from them. They mined the precious
mineral that made Anure invincible but now it was theirs and Conir
intends to destroy evil emperor with the same thing he used on them.
But first, he needed to wed the Queen of Calanthe.

The pacing seems slow but you can acknowledge the brilliance of how
every plot device and set up was done to give you a thrilling story
line which you can't really predict where it was headed. Both Con and
Lia are pawns of fate but now they're given a chance to actually buck
that and steer their own course but it had to be as a power couple.
There is no romance, there is definitely attraction of the physical
kind but you can appreciate that there was no insta anything between
these two. They were the leaders of their respective people and for
them they did the right thing. Still there were a lot of tidbits
thrown in, to keep readers invested and interested to find out what
happens next and I am definitely looking forward to finding out the
next chapter in Con and Lia's story.

I was initially drawn to The Orchid Throne because of the stunning cover and then the blurb sucked me right in. It is the first book in a new fantasy series. I tend to find the first books in new series to move a little slower because they have to focus on world building, setting up character descriptions, and so forth. That carried through with this book as well. I felt like the first portion of the book moved slowly and at times I couldn't tell if it was Lia or Con narrating the chapter because it wasn't indicated in the ARC.

However, about midway through, I hit my stride and figured out the setup and flow of the story. From that point forward, I thoroughly enjoyed the book. It took me a bit to warm up to the heroine, Lia because initially she seemed quite pretentious. However, as the story progressed, I began to better understand why she had to do the things she did. I actually ended up really liking her character by the end of the book. She's admirable and a worthy leader of her people. I also really liked Con's character. He is the most unlikely barbaric Slave King with a sensitive heart. There's so much to him that I feel we will continue to unravel into the next book. In addition, Ms. Kennedy created a fabulous group of secondary supporting characters and lent a sense of humor to the story at various points.

Overall, I found this novel to be an enjoyable read and I look forward to the next in the series which is due out in 2020.

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Publishing for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

3.75 stars

The Orchid Throne started off weak which had me wary at first, but I came to really care about the characters and their differing motivations. Conri was an escaped slave, leading his people to overthrow the murderous emperor. While he was filled with murderous rage, there was also an innocence and timidness to him. Euthalia was the queen of a kingdom that had bowed to the emperor early on and seemed to live a charmed life while other realms suffered, but she had a hidden side that was always planning and fought to put her people's needs above her own. The first third of the book was a ton of info-dump as Kennedy set up the world and how the emperor came to power. I was fairly overwhelmed for all of this information, but got more comfortable with the story once we settled into Conri and Euthalia's perspectives. The pacing was the weakest aspect to The Orchid Throne, but it did all seem to come together in the end. Despite the roller coaster pacing, I am curious about this series and truly fell in love with Conri and Euthalia towards the end. I can't wait to see how their story continues in the sequel.

I think that Lia is one of the best female fantasy character I read in a long time. She's witty, sharp and strong without being the classic kick ass heroine.
Lia it's one of the reasons I loved this book.
It's engrossing and entertaining, a romantic fantasy according to my heart with a great cast of characters and plot that seems to the prologue to an excellent fantasy series.
The plot is told by the POV of Lia and Cori, the King of Slaves, and it develops slowly but at the same time it always keeps you hooked to the page.
I loved how the writer was able to create to different voices and to help us to understand what was going on in their mind.
The world building is good even if we're just starting to discover it. We know that magic still exists even if the villain of the story, the evil emperor, tried to erase it.
The romance was good, there's a lot of chemistry between the two characters, and I rooted for Lia and Cori.
I look forward to reading the next instalment in this series.
It was an excellent read, highly recommended!
Many thanks to St. Martin's Paperbacks for this ARC, all opinions are mine.

The Orchid Throne is a painfully slow novel with a creative and unique world-building. The narrative is heavily focused on romance despite the impending threat of the emperor and there is never a true sense of danger to the story. The characters are interesting, but the different POVs are rather similar to each other and make it difficult to distinguish one character from the other.

Jeffe Kennedy’s writing is nice, but the slow pace drags the story along. There is almost no plot development aside from the romance. There are bits and pieces of intriguing information spread out throughout the novel, from what looms beyond Calanthe and how magic works in this world, yet that’s sadly not really explored all that much in this installment. Personally, this is a disappointing read.

I feel like about 15% of this book is descriptions of clothes, makeup, and women getting dressed. The pace is so incredibly slow that when things to progress a little bit, they get buried between pages and pages of nothing. And what does happen is pretty much all romance focused. The only thing fantasy about this novel is the magic and some of the world-building, but everything else gets sidelined in favor of the relationship between Lia and Con.

The characters don’t really help matters. The novel is told from the POVs of Lia and Con and the similarities between their inner monologues, which there is a lot of, makes it difficult to distinguish who’s who. Especially when there are no indications in the eARC copy of who’s the POV character for each chapter. There are some intriguing side characters, although I wish had been more fleshed out like Ambrose and Sondra.

The one big plot point of the novel is the marriage between Lia and Con and that takes such a long time to happen. When it does, the sex comes along with it in the form of some pretty… unsexy steamy scenes. And that’s supposed to be the climax of the story, no pun intended. So it’s really not impressive. Nothing happens, so there really isn’t a satisfying end to the story.

Overall, The Orchid Throne just doesn’t work for me at all. The world-building is really cool, but it’s not enough to hold the novel up. The slow pace and heavy focus on romance make this a chore to get through and the main POV characters sound too alike. I personally found this really boring and it’s not the book for me at all. Readers who enjoy fantasy romance novels with a super heavy focus on romance and a plot where nothing dangerous happens to the couple will probably love this, though.

I’m rating this 2 stars because I was so confused the first half of the book. This is more Fantasy/Romance which I wasn’t entirely expecting. The POV’s are so confusing and I couldn’t tell who was talking for a few chapters. I really struggled to get through this one!

Okay...so this is why I’m rating it 2 Stars.

The first few chapters, slow paced, getting nowhere in the story.
No indication of who’s POV it is in the ARC. Is it Lia or Con talking? Both are too similar to each other. In the ways they think and feel.
Too much rambling.
The world-building is nice, but couldn’t hold my interest for long.
Just not my cup of tea.

I received this ebook copy from the publisher and NetGalley for an honest review.

This book was an exciting adventure through a world torn apart by one man's greed and two unlikely allies. Euthalia is the Flower Queen of Calanthe and the one surviving monarch in control of her kingdom after the rest have been conquered by the emperor. However, she has had to survive knowing she was engaged to the brutal emperor. While trying to secure her country's future and put off her marriage, she hears rumors a Slave King who is "liberating" other kingdoms from the emperor. This man, Conri, has already appeared in her dreams. Conri has the goal of killing the emperor since his entire family was killed by him. This book was well written and exciting. I am looking forward to the next book in the series.

The first book in the highly anticipated Forgotten Empires Series by Jeffe Kennedy is titled The Orchid Throne. A captivating fantasy romance by a writer who knows how to lure you in and hold your attention until the very end. The Orchid Throne is a combination of two stories woven together in a beautifully creative way that leaves you wanting more. The main characters are vivid and well-written with secondary characters you are sure to want to learn more about. The world-building is well planned out and helps with the overall tone of the story. The Orchid Throne is a fascinating fantasy romance novel that I did not want to end!

This book is due to be released on 24th September, you can read my thoughts on my WordPress blog, Flora's Musings... from 22nd September.

So, what did I like about it?
Jeffe Kennedy is a new-to-me author and I was very impressed with her writing style; I found myself captivated with her beautiful and descriptive use of language. The prose she uses is intelligent, eloquent and very reminiscent of a historical novel; the words chosen and the sentence formation, while still managing to set the scene beautifully in one's mind.

I thought that the story itself was intelligent and felt well planned out and the way she weaved realistic human behaviours, known historic attitudes and etiquettes into her new fantasy world made it feel believable.

Ms Kennedy allows both her main characters - Euthalia and Conrí - to lead the reader with their own chapters/sections, giving us a chance to read their inner dialogue; I really like this because it helped me to gain a further depth of understanding, empathy and connection to both of them.

If you’ve read my reviews before, then you’ll know that I connect to a story more when the female protagonist is intelligent, resilient, self-reliant and has plenty of gumption; I wasn’t disappointed here. Even though Euthalia was a queen and lived under a plethora of restrictions, she has oodles of gumption, a political mind so sharp you could cut with it and had a wonderful sense of humour.

The many aspects of The Orchid Throne captivated me. The court espionage and rebellion kept me guessing, the battles and fighting kept me on the edge of my seat and the prejudice, injustice and brutality of the times tore me apart; I’ve got to confess, tears did trickle down my cheeks – quite a bit! But fear not, dear reader there was enough gentle humour and banter to balance the tears, the relationship between Euthalia and Conrí both warmed my old romantic heart and set the fires a-blazing too. *oh my*

So, ummm, was there anything I disliked about it?
I really liked this book but I just wanted to tell you why my rating was 4 stars rather than 5.
I think that I have already mentioned that historic fiction isn’t my preferred genre, this is mainly due to the constraining etiquette the characters are forced to live by and, as such, it took me a while to shake off my frustrations and read this story without my modern sensibilities screaming.

It’s important to remember that The Orchid Throne is an opener to a new series, I have read reviews that complained of a slow start and although I struggled with the pace at first too, I soon came to enjoy the gentle way in which Ms Kennedy gradually built the plot throughout this book. Although there is no perilous life-or-death cliffhanger at the end of this one, I liked that Ms Kennedy has left enough teasers and story threads to continue in the subsequent books.

So, basically what I’m saying is...
Although The Orchid Throne is not my usual genre, I really enjoyed the story. This book had everything that I look for in an engaging read; some mystery and intrigue, fighting and action, a sprinkling of romance with a nice balance of gentle humour.

I really liked this one though some of the pacing was a tad slow. I thought the world was very interesting and the relationship between the characters and how it grew over the course of the book was great. Really the ending was my biggest huh moment- it seemed to just end. I wanted more.

I received a digital advanced reader copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I just want to say that I absolutely adore Kennedy’s writing! I found The Orchid Throne incredibly enjoyable. The beginning was a bit slow to start, but once I got in.. I was in.

Kennedy has such an intense writing style that just captures you. Her vivid descriptions make you feel like you are right there. I will say I felt like the story wasn't fully formed. I was definitely left wanting more. But still I am super excited to see where this story goes.

Personally, I love books from dual perspectives and really enjoyed that this book had two different protagonists and you got to see things from both sides. I cannot wait for the next one. Thank you to NetGalley, St Martins Press, and Jeffe Kennedy for allowing me to review this book.

The beginning to this story waxes and wanes a bit plus it takes awhile to realize that Lia is far stronger and more intelligent than anyone has given her credit for and Con does realize that when he finally meets her (which takes a few chapters before they even meet) and immediately does everything wrong . It is an amazing tale with a bit of tragedy in the background history which is what I hope this story is going to remedy at the end of what I hope is a trilogy and not a repeat of the Sorcerous Moons Series that dragged us through 6 books before we got a great ending.

Con and Lia are the ultimate love/hate couple and they will have a lot of things to work through and more than a few surprises along the way and while the ending is not some kind of cliffhanger it does leave you wanting more (as most good books do).

4 Stars for a great story that had some slow parts but I didn't have to scan through pages and pages so obviously it held my attention.

Bottom Line: I can't wait to get my hands on the next one although I got a bad feeling since the second book in most trilogies tends to be depressing :) Add to the questions that we still don't really know who the old wizard is or how powerful he really is, that part I can't wait to find out either.