A Power Unbound
Feb. 24th, 2024 04:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
got_quietSome spoilers below. TL;DR as a third book in a trilogy it was more of the same, which basically means it was good and fun though the plot was a little bit of a mess. I think it's a solid fantasy romance series, even if it's maybe not my favorite thing.
A Power Unbound came off hold so I sat down and read that in about one sitting. I enjoyed it as much as I did the second book, which I enjoyed a little better than the first. And at this point I knew what to expect with the series, so the parts that I didn't like so much were not as disappointing.
As a romance the book works well and benefits from being able to pick up the characters from the previous books, so that we have an entire gang of gays and sundry. There is a good helping of horniness too, where the smut is there and enjoyable as a payoff. I liked Hawthorne and Alan's dynamic for the most part. Even though I think the narrative smoothed out all of Hawthorne's potential edges from the previous books and made him more passive than I was hoping he would be, the antagonism was still there at least.
As with the previous books I wasn't particularly impressed with the plot outside of the romance. It basically felt like a bunch of people fumbling around and getting stonewalled in every direction until eventually their enemies kind of fuck things up all by themselves. This book felt a little worse than the previous two for that.
Alan's little twist also was like, why? If there had been a real falling out, or if Alan had actually betrayed anyone out of his own volition things would have been more interesting, but the book wasn't willing to go there, just as it wasn't willing to give Hawthorn some sort of significant flaw. Instead it did things like emphasize that yes, he was a Lord, but he was a liberal Lord, and stuff like that. His prior relationship with Edwin is excused as him thinking he was doing some harmless verbal sparring and just unaware that he was effectively heaping abuse onto Edwin, but he's also sensitive to Alan's emotional state so he should have known better. It feels like the narrative is being too forgiving, or doesn't really want to dwell on the fact that he was genuinely an asshole in book one. Instead he's basically just a nice guy in this who flirts with insults. I wanted a little real drama between the two leads and there really wasn’t any.
I don't want to sound too grumpy about things because I read the book digital cover to digital cover and did like it. I just felt a little blue balled, emotionally, because the characterization did feel at times to suffer in service to the romance, and the story shied away from any real trouble.
The worldbuilding in this series was ok. There's not much to it, and it's mostly centered around a single premise, that magical society in England is stuck on a traditionalist and formalized method and that alternative ways of magic are not just forgotten but minimized or disregarded. The idea of this parallels high society's failures to respect and acknowledge women, minorities, the lower class, etc. As a narrative parallel it's a perfectly fine concept. There is just not that much more to it. The ideas of fey magic vs. human magic were not particularly fleshed out.
Despite what sounds like a lot of whining I would still recommend A Power Unbound for anyone who likes romances, especially if they like foeyay.
A Power Unbound came off hold so I sat down and read that in about one sitting. I enjoyed it as much as I did the second book, which I enjoyed a little better than the first. And at this point I knew what to expect with the series, so the parts that I didn't like so much were not as disappointing.
As a romance the book works well and benefits from being able to pick up the characters from the previous books, so that we have an entire gang of gays and sundry. There is a good helping of horniness too, where the smut is there and enjoyable as a payoff. I liked Hawthorne and Alan's dynamic for the most part. Even though I think the narrative smoothed out all of Hawthorne's potential edges from the previous books and made him more passive than I was hoping he would be, the antagonism was still there at least.
As with the previous books I wasn't particularly impressed with the plot outside of the romance. It basically felt like a bunch of people fumbling around and getting stonewalled in every direction until eventually their enemies kind of fuck things up all by themselves. This book felt a little worse than the previous two for that.
Alan's little twist also was like, why? If there had been a real falling out, or if Alan had actually betrayed anyone out of his own volition things would have been more interesting, but the book wasn't willing to go there, just as it wasn't willing to give Hawthorn some sort of significant flaw. Instead it did things like emphasize that yes, he was a Lord, but he was a liberal Lord, and stuff like that. His prior relationship with Edwin is excused as him thinking he was doing some harmless verbal sparring and just unaware that he was effectively heaping abuse onto Edwin, but he's also sensitive to Alan's emotional state so he should have known better. It feels like the narrative is being too forgiving, or doesn't really want to dwell on the fact that he was genuinely an asshole in book one. Instead he's basically just a nice guy in this who flirts with insults. I wanted a little real drama between the two leads and there really wasn’t any.
I don't want to sound too grumpy about things because I read the book digital cover to digital cover and did like it. I just felt a little blue balled, emotionally, because the characterization did feel at times to suffer in service to the romance, and the story shied away from any real trouble.
The worldbuilding in this series was ok. There's not much to it, and it's mostly centered around a single premise, that magical society in England is stuck on a traditionalist and formalized method and that alternative ways of magic are not just forgotten but minimized or disregarded. The idea of this parallels high society's failures to respect and acknowledge women, minorities, the lower class, etc. As a narrative parallel it's a perfectly fine concept. There is just not that much more to it. The ideas of fey magic vs. human magic were not particularly fleshed out.
Despite what sounds like a lot of whining I would still recommend A Power Unbound for anyone who likes romances, especially if they like foeyay.
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Date: 2024-02-25 05:18 am (UTC)You're right about Hawthorn too tbh, I didn't really think about it because he was my fave character and I absolutely "my baby boy my poor little meow meow"'d my way through the third book, but he was definitely more of a dick before lmao. I loooved Hawthorn and Alan in the second book and was so excited when I learned they were going to be the final pair (and I still loved their APU interactions) but if Hawthorn had kept more of that thorniness, as it were, it would have been even better...
no subject
Date: 2024-02-26 04:26 am (UTC)