So, cards on the table. The High King's Golden Tongue is one of my favourite books. I knew there would be a sequel about Lesto while I was reading that one, and as I got to know the character I became more and more excited for a book centred on him. Even so, HKGT was a hard act to follow.

Luckily, this one lived up to it. I don't love it quite as much as HKGT, but then again I didn't really expect to. Shemal is a great character and I liked watching him grow and learning about him and his family and seeing the racism present in this kingdom through his eyes, as he experiences it. Having said that, the racism is by no means systematic, those who believe that people from Shemal's country are somehow inferior are very clearly presented as being in the wrong, and by the end of the book it's something that is being actively combated.

Something else interesting, like I said in my update, is that white characters in this series are a minority, and I don't know if that was never addressed in HKGT or if it was just something that I'd forgotten since I read it. (I've been meaning to re-read it for ages and I wish I'd done that before reading this, but oh well.) Either way, it was something that forced me to reevaluate the pictures of the characters I had in my head, and to challenge the fact that I imagine everyone as white until I am told otherwise - which is obviously not a good thing, and I'm going to work on that.

I enjoyed the progression of Lesto and Shemal's relationship from an ill-advised but fondly-remembered one night stand to something that could truly last, with a goodly amount of relationship angst along the way, of course. Some of it might have been a little overdone; but I cut my teeth on Lord of the Rings angst fanfic in its heyday in the 2000s, so heavy-handed angst is kind of what I live for. Structurally it followed the same formula as HKGT, but again, definitely not a problem. It's basically the same as a general romance novel formula and that is always extremely satisfying.

My one quibble, and the reason that this has four stars and not five, is that Lesto is...kind of extremely violent. I understand that he's the High Commander of the Imperial Army and he has to be hard and ruthless in order to do that job well, and I appreciated that even though he was hard and ruthless and violent he could also be soft and loving and it wasn't ever seen as something that made him weak or less masculine or whatever, but. He did a lot of grabbing people by the throat just to question them, and there was a lot of banter with Rene and Sarrica about punching each other for minor infractions. Even Shemal did it a little with his sister. And they're all siblings and it definitely came across as an inside joke that they all consented to, which is fine, but every time it happened there was a large part of me that was like "ok but...surely we can find other ways to express our masculine frustration?"

Anyway, that was the only quibble I had with it. Overall it is a sweet, enjoyable, satisfying and magnificently queer high fantasy romp, which is exactly the kind of book I love, and I would definitely recommend both this and HKGT to anyone who has a magnificently queer high fantasy romp-sized hole in their life.