This took me by complete surprise, I didn't think I'd enjoy that as much as I did!

It's a story of how politics, hierarchy, and tradition have ruined this FMC's life. It has taken away her chances at love and has taken her whole future and tipped it upside down. She ultimately becomes everything she never wanted to be. Ironically, it feels like the cruel world she has grown up in has actually primed her to end up exactly where she is meant to be.

I really liked how women held all the power in this world, I was fascinated by how the male population was viewed. The lengths people would go to in order to rise amongst the hierarchy, plot twists, and scandal at every turn. And that ending was absolutely brilliant! I finished, and in utter shock, I had to re-read the last page to make sure I'd read it right!

Darkly regal and deliciously cutthroat, The Throne of Ash is a sharp, slow-burning political fantasy where power lies firmly in the hands of women—and no one is safe from the games they play.

A good book with a bit of a slow start and not as much drama and excitement as I had hoped for. The story is good and I like the concept but it was just missing something. I think with a bit of tweaking it could be a very good and enjoyable read as it has the bones for a great story.

Overall it was just okay for me and I did read the whole book after thinking I may give up. I'm glad I did as I think the author will only improve from gere.

Thank NetGalley and BooksGoSocial for giving me the opportunity to read adn review this book.

Very well written fantasy novel in a land ruled by women, who only use men for procreation. Only a daughter will be acceptable but complications will upend everyone’s lives and will only be resolved when the child is born.

⭐️⭐️⭐️ – A unique premise with royal intrigue, but could use more polish

The Throne of Ash by Lissy Porter presents a refreshingly unique concept: a matriarchal kingdom where women rule and men exist mostly in the background—except when a Consort must be chosen. This Tudor-inspired fantasy was an intriguing take on gendered power dynamics, with court politics, ambition, and betrayal at its core. I really appreciated the world building and the historical undertones woven into the story—it felt fresh and engaging.

That said, I found the narrative to be very exposition-heavy, with not nearly enough dialogue to balance things out or develop the characters more dynamically. The lack of conversational moments made the pacing feel slower, and I struggled to connect emotionally with the characters because of it. Additionally, the book contained quite a few spelling and grammar issues—more than I usually overlook—which disrupted the reading flow and pulled me out of the story.

I also finished the book feeling unsure of the intended audience. Some elements felt very YA, while others leaned more toward adult romantasy, and the blend didn’t quite land for me. There were pieces of the plot I was still unclear on by the end, and I wish the story had been given a bit more time in development and editing.

All of that aside, the concept itself was compelling, and I’d love to see where Lissy Porter goes next as an author. With more refinement, this could easily be a standout read. I’m definitely keeping my eye out for her future works!

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.

I've always enjoyed a Tudor story, and this gender-swapped fantasy was an engaging new way to showcase the society at the time. I thought that having the women rulers be hidden behind the "Queen's mask" and remain with a flat affect was an interesting way to highlight the difference from how royalty in Tudor stories to be described, at least in how I remember in the stories.

The premise of this book was intriguing take of the Tudor history with women having all power and control of society while men are just brud mares. It is told from the perspective of Elizabeth the princess heir to her sisters throne who is an Painter who want nothing to do with ruling or inherenting the throne. She has found love and plans to leaving everything behind for a simple life withe man she loves. Until is a play for power her lover is presented and chosen as the consort to her sister the queen, who knows nothing of her plans and relationship with him. The story follows Elizabeth live through and struggle with watching her sister with man she loves. It's a slow pacing especially at the first half with what feels like over description of the details such as clothing. Through the whole story Elizabeth is basically lustfully obsessed with her so called lover who come to find out she is under 18 and they have been together for only 6 months. The relationship is near given depth to given a baises for their so called love beyond a lustfull attachment form In sexual driven filling. She is just a lustfilled teenage girl who is obsessed with the first man she had sex with and is willing to give up everything for him.
The end slightly makes up for the lack of depth with the reflection of how the monarchy with given up everything to fulfill the duty required of the monarchy and to achieve legacy.

Thank you for the ARC copy!

This book was good, but I expected a little more drama..

It starts out very slow, I almost gave up on it but I wanted to know if she would get her man in the end or if she would choose someone else. Or if she would ever tell the queen that he was not technically a virgin..

Of course none of the above happens.. It is very slow, and there is a little bit of drama, but not as much as I would have expected and not around the topic of what the books details would suggest.

The portion of the book where the woman rule and the men are used as breeders and nothing more is an interesting take. I do think this story could have had more to it, but the ending was 100% dramatic and satisfying.

I'm glad I managed to finish this book. There were times where I almost did not. I take no pleasure at all in leaving a less than positive review but I also endeavour to be honest.

The positives are that the characters were well fleshed out, individual personalities. The premise of the book was so promising. I love the time in history. I love the idea of women totally in power after men screwed it up. The court politics were excellent. You really got a feel for the day to day restrictions of those in power and all they endured for their duty.

However. The writing was very repetitive. Not much really happened for the majority of the book. The setting was very limited. There were so many characters called Lady something of house something with different animals or sigils, plus all of their relatives who were often, not that relevant and all very similar. The male bashing really was up there and often. It was fairly predictable. Have I mentioned how repetitive it was?

As I said, I'm glad I read it to the end. It picked up the pace and so much happened. I kinda guessed where it was going, regardless, it added some excitement. I did feel for the characters and their inner turmoil but overall it was an awful lot of detail over not a lot of story.

I thought this was very good and I will have to add this to the shop shelves. Thank you for the chance for us to review.

2/5 stars

I was really intrigued by the premise of The Throne of Ash—a matriarchal society, court politics, and a sisterhood thrown into turmoil by love and duty. The Tudor-inspired world had so much potential, and I was excited to dive into something that flipped the traditional gender roles and put women at the center of power.

The worldbuilding is one of the stronger aspects of the book. The rituals, the face-painted Queen, the noble Houses with monopolies on goods like lemons and salt—it’s a vivid, imaginative setup. I appreciated the ambition and detail in how this society operates, even if sometimes it felt more like an aesthetic than a fully realized political system. I just wish some of the lore and history had been explored more deeply.

Unfortunately, the execution didn’t quite live up to the concept for me. The pacing is very slow, especially in the first half. There’s a lot of time spent on ceremony, clothing, and internal monologue, which made it hard to stay engaged. There were moments I felt genuinely bored and wondered when the story would actually start to move. The prose is heavy on description and repetition, and at times it felt like style was being prioritized over clarity or momentum.

I also struggled to connect with the characters. Princess Bess, the narrator, is difficult to root for—her emotions feel more told than shown, and her obsession with Harry (the love interest/Consort) didn’t feel believable. We’re told she loves him, but we’re never really shown why. He barely has a personality, and their relationship felt flat. Her dynamic with Queen Cecily also lacked the complexity I was hoping for; it was more bitterness than sisterhood, and it never felt fully explored.

That said, I did like the concept of the Queen’s mask and the emotional distance it symbolizes, and I thought the ending was surprisingly impactful. The last 10% of the book had real tension and emotional weight, and while I wish the rest of the story had that same energy, it at least left me somewhat curious about where the series might go next.

Overall, this was a mixed read for me. There’s a lot of promise here, and I can see it appealing to readers who enjoy slow-burn court intrigue with a strong focus on ritual and gender politics. But for me, the pacing, repetitive prose, and lack of character depth kept it from being a standout.

(Cross-posted to Fable and Goodreads and StoryGraph)

Thank you to Netgalley for the opportunity to review this book!

The premise sounded very cool! I loved the idea of a feminine Tudor-esque fantasy, and the political intrigue aspect was interesting.

However, the story starts off very slow, with very thorough and detailed descriptions of the different houses. It felt a little too much all at once for me, and I couldn’t keep them straight. I didn’t think they all needed to be included, and I wasn’t sure (apart from Bess and Cecily) who would be important characters.

Bess was an interesting character. a little morally grey, which I loved. But the writing style was a lot of internal dialogue which got repetitive after a while. In the first 3 chapters I think she had maybe 3-4 dialogue exchanges. all short and expository. So the pacing suffered because internal dialogue is hard to move the plot forward.

And while some of the political intrigue twists were done well, a lot of it was predictable from the beginning.

I’d also like to ask the publisher to think about including a content warning for a birthing scene that graphic. It was very off putting to me, and I think some people with traumatic birth stories might struggle with it.

I want to say thank you for the opportunity to read this ARC!

I want to say thank you for the opportunity to read this ARC!

Throne of Ash is a captivating fantasy novel that immerses readers in a world full of power struggles, complex characters, and political intrigue. The book centers around a heroine who must navigate the ruthless dynamics of court life and her duty in order to support “The Queen.”

Strengths:
1. World-building: Porter excels at creating a vivid and intricate world. The setting is lush that enriches the narrative and allows the reader to immerse themselves. The author’s attention to detail helps establish a sense of place, making the world feel lived-in and authentic.

2. Character Development: The protagonist is one of the novel’s strongest aspects. She’s layered, morally complex, and relatable. Her internal struggles, as well as her growth throughout the story, make for a compelling journey. She is central to the narrative, adding emotional depth to the to this Tudoresque drama.

3. Themes: The book delves into themes of power, sacrifice, loyalty, and identity. The protagonist's journey is one of self-discovery, where she grapples with her personal beliefs and the harsh demands of the throne. It’s a story about what one is willing to sacrifice in order to protect power and the ones she loves.

Weaknesses:

1. Pacing Issues: The beginning can feel slow as the author builds the world for the reader. The initial setup takes time to unfold, and the plot takes a while to gather momentum. For readers who prefer fast-moving stories, this could be a bit of a turn-off.

2. Overly Descriptive: At times, the writing can feel overly descriptive, which can bog down the pace, especially when the focus shifts from action to setting or background details. This might test the patience of some readers who prefer a more streamlined narrative. The author also repeats phrases multiple times which for me was pretty frustrating.

3. Predictability: While the book does feature some unexpected twists, the overall trajectory of the plot may feel familiar to fans of political fantasy. The struggle for the throne, with all its machinations, is a well-trodden path, and at times, the book doesn’t stray too far from genre conventions.

Overall:

Throne of Ash is an engaging and immersive read for fans of court intrigue and fantasy. It’s a book full of twists, betrayals, and complex characters. While it might not be groundbreaking in terms of plot, the depth of the world-building and the emotional depth of the protagonist make it an enjoyable read. If you enjoy stories about royal courts and struggles for power are central themes, this novel will likely resonate with you.

This was very difficult to get through due to the repetitiveness of some phases including "Throne of Ash". Some of the plot points from later in the book were too obvious from the start of the book and it reduced the enjoyment.

The Throne of Ash by Lissy Porter was a book I grabbed based on the summary and I have to say, while it's not noted as a series, I'm wondering if there will be a second book to this one as the way it ended, it could absolutely continue.

Our fmc is Bess, the princess and heir to the Throne of Ash. In the world the Porter has developed, women are in charge and valued and men are seen as nothing more than tools for breeding. Because of this, the book opens on the Queen (Bess's sister Cecily) going through the ceremony of choosing her consort. What is unexpected to Bess is that the man she has chosen for herself, and her future away from court, has been brought to court by his aunt as a possible consort for the Queen and the only person in her family who doesn't know about him is the Queen. Because of that, Cecily ends up choosing him and things start to twist and turn from here.

I initially felt bad for Bess. I couldn't tell if she and her sister had a good or bad relationship so wondered if she would have said something to Cecily would she have released Harry or would she truly have held it over her head as Bess thought? Her decision to never have him going forward and the fact that that changes very quickly is what makes my feelings for Bess change. I feel like she never actually tried to move on despite the fact that she said she was going to...and Harry was having sex with her sister...and often.

Outside of that bit of the story, there is a lot of court politics and intrigue in this one. That is what the purpose was behind bringing Harry to court as a consort in the first place as his aunt wanted to gain more power and when he was chosen as the consort, she used it as a way to gain influence. Unfortunately for her, it created more problems for her as she tried to do take too much. In the end, everything backfires on her and she pays a pretty big price which is the beginning of the end for the entire House they belong to.

Ultimately, the Queen finds herself with child and Bess sees this as her opportunity to plan her escape for the future with a new heir on the way. The question is what will happen with Harry. I won't say much more here as I don't want to give anything away but there are quite a few twists that happen that mean not everything goes as planned. And as I mentioned, the way Porter ended this book, it could easily jump into a book two to see what happens next for the characters and this kingdom.

If you're looking for a fantasy romance that has a bit of a historical feel to it, consider picking this one up. I found it to be well written and while the characters were somewhat questionable, I found myself turning the pages to find out what was going to happen next for everyone.


The Throne of Ash is a Tudor-esque fantasy in which women rule, and men are kept in the background, of little use, aside from when a Consort must be chosen. Then, court intrigues, and politics come to the fore in a deadly game of politics and etiquette that sets sister against sister.

The Throne of Ash has never been more on fire.

"the men aren't great thinkers or scholars. they're not great painters, or wits or anything at all. they think only of how to garb themselves and who has the most garnets in their ears, or bedecking their codpieces, when dressed, and when not dressed? well, the rumours make even me blush. the men are all fluff and nonsense."

tw: graphic description of childbirth gone wrong

firstly, thanks to NetGalley for the arc and the NetGalley app's text-to-speech feature because turning it into a quasi-audiobook was the only way i could slog through "The Throne of Ash". i hate that i keep coming across interesting-concept-terrible-execution books, but this one was truly barely readable and i only finished it because i picked up the arc.

it was bad from page 1, i just didn't grasp that early on how bad it would end up being. it was the repetitions, at first. every line had to repeat the phrase "the Throne of Ash". if it wasn't the throne of ash, it was the Kingdom of Ash, or the tower of ash, of the Queen of Ash. descriptions were so repetitive that i kept losing track of where i was on the page, hence, swapping to TTS.

i mean the grammar was appalling. i know what i have is an unfinished version—far from an edited product, as it would seem from the author's bluesky—but this requires such extensive editing that 1. i doubt it'd be ready for the may release day 2. it'd be cut short by a good 100-150 pages, and i'm not being generous. i couldn't pick every example, so here's a select handful of egregious errors, contrivances, and inconsistencies:

CHAPTER 1
"One of Lady Alice's daughter's sits in the Privy Council, advising the queen on matters of state" -> a small typo, and yet an omen of what's to come.

CHAPTER 4
"I'm deemed an adult at sixteen years old, if the queen's heir." -> unfinished sentences like this litter the book, and again, perhaps they'll be found and fixed before the official release but there's too many of them.

CHAPTER 11
"I assure you, he'll be keen to bore you with all the details. I warn you, he can be very boring." / "Will you arrange another Consort arrangement for him?" -> likewise, sentences like this, where it feels like the author had two options to choose from and forgot to delete one, or where repetitive words were used seemingly with intention to find a synonym later.

CHAPTER 13
"Almost immediately, I feel my focus narrow to Harry, the charcoal in my hand and the actions of my hand." -> again, unnatural repetition of a word in the same sentence.
"I've never seen my mother embroider in all my years of knowing her." -> so... your whole life? i get the intention is that she has not seen her mother to her memory but it's such an strange phrasing to choose.

CHAPTER 14
"I'm sure my father will inform me if I thinks I should." -> self-explanatory.

CHAPTER 16
"Then that's will be done." -> again, self-explanatory.

CHAPTER 17
"Outside, the servants have taken advantage of the cooler morning air to arrange the picnic so it's all prepared when I stroll outside <...>" -> again, the repetition. it goes overlooked in so many instances it has me wondering whether the author may have used generative AI for editing and tweaking.

CHAPTER 19
"The house of Salt have been untruthful when presenting your chosen Consort to you. Your Consort, it's believed, isn't even a birth member of the House of Salt, but rather a changeling brought into the House for this very purpose. Lady Alice's sister did not give birth to a child who lived. Instead, your Consort was brought into the cradle and passed off as one of her own." -> I've flagged this one as a spoiler as it pertains to a key plotline. With all the silly names of different noble houses, one thing is made clear—Harry is the Consort sent forward by the House of Fish, not Salt, making it an egregious plot error. I have no idea how something like this went overlooked.

CHAPTER 20
"She was tasked with teaching the queen and I about the birds and the bees." -> well this one puts the author's claim about "putting her historian hat on" to a proper test. this story is supposed to be a soft of fantasy-esque version of the Tudor world. we can reference Henry VIII as the sort of most recognizable king of the Tudor era, so he would've reigned in the first half of the 16th century. we can take Elizabeth I, who reigned the latter half. in either case, considering the phrase "the birds and the bees" was, to our knowledge, likely mentioned around the mid 17-th century at the earliest, and even removing it from its historical context completely, it feels like such an anachronism.

CHAPTER 25
"I hold it tightly, surmising this has somehow come from Harry. How it's made its way into Lady Mary's hands, I don't know. I grip it tightly, considering simply tipping it into the waves around the barge, but I don't. Instead, I hold it tightly, and only open my hand when I'm once more in my apartments, and my women, no longer sombre. have returned to gossiping." -> nope, i did not take excerpts from three different parts of the chapter, she really grips this tiny piece of paper THREE TIMES at once. oh my god i know an arc is not a finalized book but these things can be caught early on.

CHAPTER 28
"This child is huge,' she complains, rubbing her back. 'It's all very inconvenient,' she complains, before bidding me goodnight." -> surely there's a better verb than 'complains', twice.

CHAPTER 31
"Yesterday, the echoes would have been unending, reaching to the farthest reaches <...>" -> at this point just no comment.
"I'm more terrified than they can ever now." -> and another one of those sweet types we got used to around the way to end this journey.

this book also suffers greatly from issues of pacing. the first half, the plot barely moves and doesn't pick up its pace until maybe around chapter 20ish, when we're suddenly speedrunning Cecily's pregnancy. the ending basically catches you off-guard, as you go from barely covering a single day to skipping several months ahead.

next, let's move on to misandry and patriarchy.

see, i do like the idea of a world ruled by women. put it in a monarchist setting and there's a lot of sand to play with, and Porter certainly tries to play but there are too many inconsistencies. the rules of primogeniture seem to not be set in stone or codified definitively, given that <spoilers>a third child is selected as an heir based on a prophecy. the world-building issues were described really well by a different review digging into the strange system of houses based on their trade and how the different merchant paths overlap in a manner that would eliminate other houses. there's not much on other states or kingdoms, bar one, which is apparently ruled by men, so the matriarchal system of the kingdom of ash (try to imagine reading every other sentence with that mouthful interjecting) does not appear to be widely spread.

the thing is, this book wants to present a spin on the Tudor world, and the author does reference henry viii in her note, but i expected this book to a world ruled in misandry. as it turns out, that's not the case. despite trying to position this world as ruled by women, the men are still at the forefront of the story in ways that seemed to break what little worldbuilding we got. the exception is made to the dead queen's only living son. sure, that line can be drawn. but then also a boy who happened to be born the same day has privileges too? Elizabeth talks about how men are no more than breeding bulls brought out only for consorting, but even then, the way some men got privileges over others did not seem to follow any pattern or particular favours offered by a monarch. neither Henry nor Charles having court privileges made sense. Harry's temporary rise into favour was better explained for obvious reasons. even then, with Elizabeth's point of view and reverie with which she speaks of the men, it centres them in her story. it ceases being a tale of two sisters whole relationship deteriorates due to Cecily's imminent rise to power, it becomes a story of "which male lover should i take?" for Elizabeth.

another tie-in with the roles of women vs. men is the background roles. are the royal guards women or men? i could not say. the servants are apparently women, but i don't recall any servant being named as a man. what about the broader kingdom? sure, Elizabeth is second in line for the throne, she is probably disconnected from the common folk, but do they adhere to the same matriarchal structure? are men just as out of favour there? how do people live in contrast to the lavish feasts and fancy fabrics of the monarchy? is it a time of peace, a crisis? is the kingdom prosperous or suffering from famine? we head barely that, for instance, the house of fish (ugh) provides salted fish for everyone in winter and the house of seacoal (uuuuugh) keeps the people warm, but how many people? how big is this kingdom exactly? what is the social divide, do the peasants threaten to revolt? maybe something of this nature will come up in the sequels, i won't care enough to read them.

the core issue of "the throne of ash" is it doesn't know if it wants to be young adult or adult fiction. it's too tame for the latter—despite what you might expect from the courting setting at the very beginning, it shies from being overtly sexual, while the protagonist and her sister are around 16-18 years old. but it's also too brutal at times to be the former.

with that in mind, let's talk about chapter 30.

i wouldn't be surprised if a lot of the novel—and indeed the trilogy—was envisioned precisely around this scene, given its detailedness, gratuity and length. for all intents and purposes, for a book that's so heavily about consorts and heirs and lovers, it's pretty sexless throughout, with a few vague mentions of Cecily's or Elizabeth's relations with harry during their respective relationships. so, reaching chapter 30, it felt a lot like this George R. R. Martin quote:

"I can describe an axe entering a human skull in great explicit detail and no one will blink twice at it. I provide a similar description, just as detailed, of a penis entering a vagina, and I get letters about it and people swearing off."

dancing around Cecily's procreation and enjoyment of sex behind closed doors is a stark contrast to the bloody, gruesome birthing bed. porter goes into very explicit detail of the bleeding, the cutting, the dying, it was all a little bit "House of the Dragon" s1e1 to me. i won't get into the physics of two babies being overlooked in the womb, that felt too bonkers even with the overall quality of the book, but the way in which Cecily's birth and death are described felt... too gratuitous far what is, at the end of the day, a very ya-sounding book with quite young main characters.

there's so much to pick apart, so much to say, so many ways that this has gone wrong yet wouldn't have, if Porter had a very patient editor. She's mentioned this was a project she's been working on for years and I comment that, but frankly, she's not a very attentive writer. If anything she just gives an impression of a pretty lazy one. The handful of detailed descriptions of food or clothing do have some thought put into them. If only the rest of the plot had been cared for as much.

Thank you to NetGalley and BooksGoSocial for the opportunity to read this ARC. I think the author has a lot of potential—there are some interesting ideas here, and with more refinement to her writing style, I believe she’ll go on to publish some truly compelling stories.

Unfortunately, I ended up DNF-ing this one around the halfway mark. I struggled with the writing—it lacked flow and felt a little flat at times, with repetitive rhythms that made it hard to stay engaged. The worldbuilding also wasn’t described vividly enough for me to form a clear picture of the setting, which made it difficult to immerse myself in the story.

That said, I’ll definitely keep an eye out for future work from this author!

This Tudor inspired novel is sort of an alternate history where the matriarchy reigns supreme. The world in which this book takes place is artfully woven and vivid, filled with new traditions, rituals, and religion. The protagonist, Princes Elizabeth, lives the boring life as the Royal spare. Her beloved is taken as consort to the queen. From where the story doesn’t really go anywhere, there is zero character development and each day in the book is about as boring as the next. I kept reading hoping that something amazing would happen, but it doesn’t. In fact, I absolutely hated the entire ending.

Princess Bess has a lover but when he is chosen by Queen Cecily to be her Consort, Bess’ life is turned upside down. Cecily, Queen of Ash wears while face make up so her people only see the Queen not the woman behind the throne. Bess is heartbroken but as the Queen’s sister and heir she cannot alter her situation.

Very well written fantasy novel set in a land where women are superior and men just needed for procreation. Only a healthy baby girl will be acceptable but complications will arise that will affect many lives. The future will only be resolved when the Queen gives birth, hopefully to a daughter.

I loved this book. I can't wait until I can read the next book by Lissy Porter. Four out of five stars from me as some things could have been better, but really good overall.