TL;DR Review: A beautiful balance of magic and intrigue, action and romance, underscored by a lovely “Persephone and Hades” flavor.
Synopsis:
BLOOD BOUND AND PENNILESS. EXILED INTO CURSED LANDS. HUNTED BY DEATH.
When the thief Suri suffers a humiliating robbery, she has one day to pay off an ugly debt. Her solution: abduct and impersonate a foreign princess at the royal ball. But the wickedly handsome fae lord of the wasteland, Kol, has gatecrashed the party to find the princess she’s pretending to be. And worse, his bodyguards are the same ones who robbed her the night before.
With Suri’s knife lodged in Kol’s right-hand man, stolen trinkets in her pockets, and now her kidnapped princess missing, she can’t outrun the law. The King exiles her with one condition: assassinate Kol, and all is forgiven. But Kol has promised his own brutal revenge against her—if his wastelands don’t kill her first.
Full Review:
A Pocket of Lies fires HARD on all cylinders!
From the beginning, it’s clear we’re getting a thief fantasy. Suri is a pickpocket, con artist, grifter, cutpurse, and basically anything else she needs to be to survive on the hard streets of her city. She owes more than she can possibly pay to a thief gang leader, and in her desperation, she picks the wrong pocket.
After suffering a beating, growing more frantic, she decides it’s time to up the stakes: she’s not just going to stick for lifting a few coins here or there. No, she’s going to rob the swankiest ball in town. And there just so happens to be a rich young woman who looks exactly like her, the perfect person to kidnap so she can take their clothes.
And thus begins what I will describe as Suri’s String of REALLY BAD LUCK and Everything Going Wrong. The ball seems to off without a hitch—except, of course, for when she finds herself attracted to the WRONG shadow daddy and kills one of the guests—but she finds herself captured, magically bound to kill the very man she’s insanely attracted to, sold off as a slave, and more.
Suri’s wits and talents keep her alive—barely—but everything keeps going from bad to worse for her. Especially when she finds out Lord Handsome Shadow Daddy is actually Kol, Lord of Death, the “evil” magical scourge that destroyed the world upon his birth.
I’m not going to spoil the rest of the story, but suffice it to say, it is not afraid to go dark and keeps throwing crazy twist after twist until you. I tell you, from about the 25% mark onward, my neck hurt from all the whiplash—and I loved it!
The story is basically divided into three aspects:
- The thieving/heisty/sneaky parts, where Suri gets to use her cunning and trickery to pull off something that would have been impossible for someone else. This is where we see what she is capable of, and where her strength as a character and strength of spirit really shines through.
- The magic parts, where we begin to understand the types of magic that rule the world, the high cost of using and accessing the magic, and what people (not Suri, but everyone around her) is willing to do to gain more power. This is the “high-concept” part of the fantasy that’s done just well enough to be interesting but doesn’t get overwhelming or feel dry.
- The romance, an INSANELY slow-burn development of feelings between Suri and Lord Shadow Daddy. With his “Lord of Death” vibe and the whole “death magic” aspect baked into the story, it has a lovely “Persephone and Hades” feel that I really liked. There’s only hints at what Suri may be able to do, but one very small but important scene in the middle sets up bigger and better things to come (without detracting from the story).
The pacing felt a bit slow at the beginning, with Suri’s torment really being dragged out, but I’m always down for a bit of suffering when it develops the main character well. By the time the story takes off for real, it sets a pretty steady canter and keeps going harder and harder, upping the stakes and the danger and mystery and romance again and again.
The balance between the thieving, magic, and romance was done really well, with each moving forward steadily without overriding or drowning out the others. The character work was also excellent; the deep insight into Suri’s mind and character does all the heavy lifting in development, but makes sure we know her intimately and love her intensely.
I’d be doing this book a disservice by calling it foremost romantasy, because the magic and intrigue does so much of the heavy lifting. The addition of romance into a high fantasy story evocative of A Throne of Glass does an amazing job of making it a beautifully well-rounded and emotionally complex tale.
I enjoyed it so much I dove straightaway into Book 2 the minute I finished!
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