I received an advanced reader's copy of this novel via Netgalley.com in exchange for an honest review.

3.5 rounded up to 4 because the novel DID grow on me towards the end.

I'm so d*mn conflicted about this book. It's a slow burn, the first half being nearly plot-less, only tolerable due to the genuinely interesting main characters. HOWEVER, the second half of the novel was much more engaging. For perspective, it took me over a month and a half to drag myself to the 60% mark, but only 2 days to finish reading from there.

My guess is that this novel desperately wishes to be a less-depressing version of The Traitor Baru Cormorant , but falls flat on the attempted political intrigue, though eventually hits the mark on the more traditional adventure-driven arc.

If I were Ms. Pearce's editor, I would suggest major revisions to the first half of the novel before publication, though at this point it is a bit too late.

3.5 stars
I loved the premise, the queer representation and the world building but the book felt like it was largely relationship based, which would have worked for a slow burn type read, but because the characters got together so quickly, it just didn’t work for me.

A bit long, but definitely worth it

When the Queen ordered her entire family to be killed, Raena survived. However, she had to hide her identity under the alias of Sir Rowan, a knight, planning her revenge. But when the Queen is finally within her reach, she meets Aven, a Duchess. And as their common goal unites them, the two women will find themselves in a strange situation.

For a good half of this book, I planned on giving it only stars. Why? Because it was really long and the beginning was a bit slow, I'm not going to lie about this. But please, trust me and keep reading, because it is worth it! Let me tell you why you should read this. First, sapphic fantasy book. Do you need more? I don't, but let's keep going. Second, heavy political intrigue. Again, the beginning can feel slow and blurry, but as the story unfolds, it gets more intense and everything starts to make sense, which is simply AMAZING. Third, THE SEXUAL TENSION! It is gloriously put and I was here for it! I loved how their relationship developped and the two of them in general. Reana.... I love her! Fourth, the world, which was quite interesting. I really liked how the author scattered the information through the book just when we needed it. It felt really light and breathy in that way, which constrasted perfectly with the deep politics of it all. The action scenes were really well described and intense. The characters were really touching and lovable each in their own way and some lines of dialogue had me laughing, or gasping and I loved it. All in all, it was a surprising, heated, deep and fascinating story that I would really recommend.

If you're into heavy political fantasy with a hot sapphic romance... Well don't hesitate, this is for you!

"The beast that you feed is the beast that grows."

Black crown

I received an e ARC of this novel.

Overall I enjoyed this book. I’ve never read a midsummer’s night (shocking I know) but I’m glad that I haven’t so that I wasn’t constantly comparing the two given that this book is advertised as a retelling. I enjoyed most of the character, the povs, romance, and world. Maybe because it’s an arc there wasn’t a map. Needs a map! With so many locations mentioned and journeyed to, a map would be nice. I liked the beginning action and thought the description of fighting etc. was well done, and I didn’t mind that we spent a lot of time in the action before it finally got to the heart of the issue with what the rest of the story would be about. Some spoilers ahead.

I enjoyed the multiple povs (3 in total) although the Queen’s perspective didn’t add a lot to the story until the end. I wish the book blurb didn’t tell us that three women would betray the crown as I was constantly waiting and searching for the third. And when the Queen’s POV entered I guessed it was her but... the story never says how she’s is betraying the crown and I’m left at the end of the book wondering if she did. And I would argue that the second POV didn’t really betray the crown either, as she repeatedly says she’s taking action that she hopes would not violate their treaty. So I don’t know that she’s consciously making a decision to betray the crown. Still the plot was intriguing with a fair amount of secrets slowly revealed.

I enjoyed the lead character, especially hiding as a convincing knight. The second POV and love interest I connected less with. The romance between the two was enjoyable and believable - yes love at first sight can happen (I’ve seen a few reviewers complain about that but I think it’s just a reflection of reality and some people do fall fast). However, at one point the characters are in a position that they need to be quiet and stick to a plan or be slaughtered and these two are laughing and trying to turn each other on.

I still don’t know what the black crown is. Why is it black? Is there another symbolic reason why it was called that? While some of the world history and previous wars are mentioned, I didn’t feel like I understand the backstory of the world and why some of the territories were at odds with one another (might be my own reading issue). For the Duchies I wish more was sprinkled throughout the story to understand why this political intrigue mattered.

It was still enjoyable and I will be reading the second just to see where the surprise from the ending goes or doesn’t go within the story of the characters. And I’m definitely looking forward to understanding more about the pale race/creatures that the lead character may be connected to (I’m interested to see how closely connected she is).

DNF 32%

I really wanted to love this book. The plot sounded right up my alley.

Girl poses as a knight in order to get revenge against the queen who killed her family. Gets sent away as a knight to a duchess and they fall in love. I’m like sounds good, sign me up.

The book fell so flat though. It started off pretty good. I liked the characters and the Trial. Good action. After that nothing happened. I’m all for political intrigue in books but I felt it was dragging the story down. Characters were flat. To me a story about revenge should be intense. It should ignite strong emotions in the reader to want to see revenge as much as the characters. I just didn’t care. I liked Avenna but she wasn’t enough for me to keep reading. Prince Zander is basically Joffrey from Game of Thrones. The cruel villain who is cruel because he can be. *Rolls eyes*

I skimmed the ending which was disappointing. The characters and plot was bland, I don’t think the romance would have saved this book. I don’t feel the need to stick around to find out. Sad to say but it’s a no for me.

*Received via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review*

2.5 stars

I liked a lot of things in this book. The lgbtq+ rep was good, the political plot was good but the main problem or the biggest flaw were the pace and the character development. I feel like nothing happened here. No actually, I feel like a lot things happened but nothing major did and that made this book dragged so much I thought of DNFing twice (I didn't tho)
Now, the main characters... they were for the lack of better word, boring. I didn't care for any pov and in a fantasy book that's bad.
Overall this could have been great but it was only okay.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publishers for the chance to read this book in exchange for an honest review

The idea and plot behind this book is absolutely fantastic, however I ended up not finishing the book. I really enjoyed how our main knight is actually a woman waiting to take her revenge on the people who wronged her family. I think that this kind of take is not as common in the fantasy world - or I haven't seen it done that many times before - even though it does give off a Mulan vibe. I enjoyed how the author added in queer representation in an organic way and it wasn't used just to be used to sell the book.

For me I stopped reading because the story was taking a little longer than I wanted to get hooked, but when it is released for the public I would give it a second chance if I get my hands on it.

Thank you to Netgalley for providing me with this e-arc!

Unfortunately I have to mark this as a DNF. It seems that I'm not the only one with similar opinions on Traitors of The Black Crown.

I got to around the 30% mark and I was just extremely underwhelmed and disinterested. I don't mind slow plots but in that case I need to have something else to fall back onto and with this book I just had nothing to keep me going.

Three women will betray the black crown. A Knight. A Duchess. A Queen.

Okay, here we go...
There is nothing I hate more than books filled with so many letters and words and phrases and they end up saying...well, basically nothing.
This book was bland and boring and frankly, I couldn't tell you if it was supposed to be character driven or plot driven, because both aspects sucked.
I will obviously not be reading the second book, so do with this information what you will. Take it as a recommendation or don't, it's up to you.

So about 1/3 of the way into this book, I gave up. The pace is unbelievably slow and while everything looked so amazing from the onset: the description, cover, etc... it was beyond slow with forgettable characters. Very rarely do I not finish a book... maybe one day I will come back to it but at this time, I'm just disappointed.

Thanks to NetGalley for the arc.

I truly tried to get into this but unfortunately found from the lack of plot to the lack of connection I had even with the characters I simply just felt I was reading the words to get through the book rather than enjoying my time reading it. Maybe this just wasn't the book for me but ultimately I do feel there are other Fantasy Adult books that I would recommend over this one.

Thank you to Netgalley for the arc!

3/5
The prose was very good! Very easy/enjoyable to read in most moments!
Character interaction, specifically in smaller moment, very good!
Mostly there are some moments when the scene/imagery is added between/mixed with dialogue, thought, character. Meanwhile, in later moments there will be concise, sweeping imagery. I find these problematic moments in more 'big' scenes than in smaller, quieter scenes. This was my big fuss, other than maybe the speed/pace and intrigue. In my opinion, more bad guys, more moral ambiguity, and there is a cast of characters that could be spun to suit those needs.

Thank you to NetGalley and Hansen House for the eARC.

In theory, this book has all the ingredients of a great story that usually I wouldn't be able to put down: a high fantasy setting with an abundance of court politics and schemes and in the middle of it a sapphic love story. But that's in theory. In reality, this book just fell flat for me and I'm not entirely sure why.

It might be that none of the POV characters truly caught my interest and I think the story would have been far better if told exclusively from Raena's POV. I get why that wasn't possible at times but Aven to me wasn't truly interesting. There was hardly anything to her backstory - or anything much to make her interesting to me. She seemed to have no flaws whatsoever and I find that boring. I want to shake my head at characters fondly and follow them through their foolishness, coming out saying "I told you so," and then give them a blanket. Zarana's POV was interesting, though inconsistent at times (is she truly so sick now or not because suddenly she can travel long distances?) and looking back, unnecessary except for maybe the last part.

It might have also been the worldbuilding. I'm a huge lover of good, detailed worldbuilding and in the beginning, I was really looking forward to this here. But sadly we didn't go much beyond what we first learn. Most information provided left me with more questions than answers about the different cultures and countries and historic events. Not to mention the war that breaks out about halfway through the book. I don't want to go into too much detail to avoid spoilers but there were so many things that don't make sense to me here - and maybe some of those will be remedied in the second book but it felt like too many plots at times were squeezed into one while the ending was so abruptly tying them together. You can have an invasion (which... the implications of said invasion and history behind the conflict I don't think were dealt with accurately, but that might be because of the limited POV) and a tyrant king you need to dethrone in one book but I personally would have liked for this to be more dragged out and given more attention separately. On the other hand, Zander seemed like a cardboard copy of a villain so maybe this was for the best.
(Also I really hope the finished version comes with a map because man, was I lost sometimes when there was traveling going on - which was pretty much 87% of the book.)

It might have also been that I couldn't quite connect to the writing style, which I know is a very subjective opinion. It was just something about the way information and jokes were delivered and things and people were described that took me out of the story at times. One of the biggest plot twists in the last chapter, I was calling halfway through the book and while I enjoy catching plot twists before if there are small breadcrumbs laid out to find them, this one was just glaringly obvious. So obvious that a red, neon arrow appeared every time, pointing at the hint and blaring an alarm so you may not miss that Hey, This Is Important Now Connect The Dots.

There's a lot more I could get into (the blatant misogyny by literally every character?, Raena's entire character as both a woman posing as a man and as someone of Boen ancestry, the romance) but I'll leave it at this for now:

This wasn't a bad book by any means and I'm sure there are people out there who will enjoy this far more than me. A lot of it comes down to personal taste. I probably will pick up the second book because I like to see things through and I enjoyed some of the side characters enough to want to see their story unfold (Hey Fin, Allyn, and Bell my loves) but sadly, it's not something I'm as eagerly anticipating as I hoped I would when I first started reading.

As a reader who doesn't usually gravitate towards fantasy, this book was all I could ask for and more when it came to this genre. The author's ability to paint a world and give character depth made the page turning novel feel as if I was part of the story itself. The connections the characters have to one another woven into the story made each chapter just as exciting as the last. I specially loved following Raena/Rowan through the challenges and tribulations with other characters and how it all perfectly ties into the story line. For this being the author's first published work, the writing and detail were absolutely phenomenal. I cannot wait until the next installment of the series!

I received a copy of this e-arc in exchange for an honest review thanks to NetGalley and Hansen Publishing.

I have to say, when I started this, I wasn’t really feeling it. I was actually considering not finishing it.

However, I was completely suckered by Aven and Raena’s relationship. It started off as nothing, but as they got to know each other, I wanted more from them. I wanted more moments together. Their friendship to develop. Their secrets to be shared. I wanted it all!

I loved the plot and the characters (even though the prince and queen were just vile, I loved their addition to the storyline.)

I was completely enraptured by this book once the story picked up. It gave me major Merlin (2008 TV series) vibes with the descriptions of the scenery, the types of people (knights, royals, bandits, etc), the way the kingdoms are run and the descriptions of their travels.

It got to the point that when I had to stop reading (due to work, sleep, etc) I was itching to continue reading, it was all I could think about.

THAT ENDING. WHY A CLIFFHANGER. GIMME BOOK 2 PLEASE.

I mean, thank you for the preview of the next book. It answered my questions from that cliffhanger. But book 2 now please.

I think fantasy might slowly becoming a second favourite genre of mine - especially lgbt fantasy.

There were parts of Traitors of the Black Crown that I enjoyed and engaged with, and there were other parts that fell a little bit short for me.
I appreciated the politics and how it played into the plot. But, some of the characters' and character's actions felt as though they needed to be more three dimensioned and nuanced.

This book was really slow, though enjoyable. I loved the queer representation, but there wasn't quite "enough." There wasn't a lot of plot to this book, but the world-building was good. It kind of reminded me of Midnight Lie in that sense, though there was more plot in this. I also was put off by the switching POVs but that is just a personal preference.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC which I received in exchange for an honest review!

I had high hopes for this book besides on the synopsis but unfortunately, they fell short. The entire time I was reading, I just kept thinking, “where is the plot?” There were several points when I almost decided to DNF this book but I don’t like doing that. I wanted the characters to have more banter but that was not what I got either.

I plan to give this author another try in the future because the concept was very interesting but yeah this book was just okay.

This is one of the few books I will mark as DNF. I got about 20% into the book, and I could not force myself to continue reading it. I could not connect to the characters or even bring myself to care about their world.

Traitors of the Black Crown is a very ambitious, high fantasy debut with a lot of potential to be a great series!
What intrigued me initially to pick up this book was the LGBTQ+ Representation, the F/F relationship and masculine presenting female main character. These are all things that I want to see more of in fantasy and made me so excited to pick up this book.

The story itself is very detailed and you can tell a lot of work went into it. There’s romance, political intrigue, action and some humour too!
One thing I did find a bit exhausting was the amount of world building for one book. I do think parts of this story might have worked better if they were kept for book two and could have been fleshed out more, rather than trying to put so many things in one. Also, this book was over 900 pages, so not a short read by any stretch!

There’s a lot of twists and turns in the story, including some that I genuinely did not see coming at all! It definitely kept me on my toes throughout, which is impressive for such a long read. However, some parts were not very well explained and felt glossed over, but again I think it was just an issue of having too many plot points and locations in the one book.

Overall, I did like this book and I’m excited for what the author comes up with next. I just hope it’s more evenly paced next time.