Damn. This was so promising! That in media res opening really hooked me, and also, I listened to this one as an audiobook and the narrator did such a good job with the angry, self-deprecating POV character’s voice. A book with a trans MC, found family, angrily dealing with trauma, standing up to oppression, and deconstructing the fated mates trope sounded amazing. But alas, the further I got into it, the more I felt like the execution of the novel didn’t live up to its amazing potential.

Honestly, this felt very much like an early draft in need of editing. There are numerous sections that read like they were written only as means of figuring out what comes next. Plenty of characters have the exact same shrugging, lip-biting, fangs-gnashing mannerisms. The MC regularly pauses in the middle of dialogue and action to contemplate a bunch of stuff and go off tangent, to the point that I genuinely kept forgetting where the current scene was taking place or what was even happening in it by the time he stopped with the musings. The worldbuilding is full of holes, and the way the fae society functions is more just… a vague collection of ideas that need a lot of thinking through. There was really no need to explicitly spell out that the witches’ position in the fae society is a metaphor for trans/queer kids in the real world. The magic system is all over the place and doesn’t stick to its own rules. All in all, the book feels like someone excitedly telling themself or their closest friends a story, occasionally pausing to insert their own strong opinions in the style of a viral Tumblr post. Which is a perfectly valid state for a book to be in! But, uh, maybe some of this should be fixed before publication.

There *are* things here that I found consistently interesting and promising, but I kept thinking of ways to fix the execution more than I was thinking about the story. Like, we have this premise: Wyatt escaped to the human world years before the book starts, now he’s getting dragged back by his fae prince fated mate. Once there, he gets a proposal from the villain whose beliefs clearly go against Wyatt’s own: make everyone hate you so that the wedding never happens, which would weaken the prince’s position and strengthen the villain. Wyatt wants to go back to the human world and also wants to cause chaos, so he agrees, and some shenanigans do follow—except they feel more like a series of loosely connected vignettes than a plot. Yeah, he does some chaotic stuff. The results of it get promptly fixed with magic, and no one’s opinion on Wyatt or the impending wedding changes much. He doesn’t have any real plans to meet his goal, he just wonders around the plot and makes intentional bad decisions.

Then we’ve got Briar, his best friend from the human world whose parents kind of adopted Wyatt in the backstory. When Emyr appears to drag Wyatt back to Asalin, she allegedly follows because she wants to help Wyatt with his goal of NOT marrying Emyr. But once they’re there, she’s just running around excitedly learning about the new world and nods along whenever the locals talk about Wyatt’s future marriage like it’s set in stone. Does anyone here know how to have consistent agendas??? Though she’s still a way better friend to Wyatt than he is to her.

Speaking of Briar and her parents, I’ve got a lot of questions to them. It was very nice of Briar’s mom to pick up a lonely struggling teen in a library and bring him home (I keep wondering how the family sorted out the legalities around it all, but okay, maybe Wyatt legitimately doesn’t care and doesn’t know). But it sounds like the family just literally tossed this teen into a room with their own teenage daughter and left it up to her to put him together, help him figure himself out, have a short-lived romance with him, become his codependent best friend, try to, in her own words, “be everything he needs her to be,“ etc, etc. Oh, and then they just let the two of them wander off with some winged, horned stranger. I have questions for these adult people. Big questions. Are they even characters, or are they just plot devices existing to make Wyatt and Briar’s story possible?

And the trouble here is, it could be a very good book! Such a good book! There’s SO MUCH potential here if only it got polished. I really loved all the poking at the fated mates trope—some of those moments were the most subtly done, leaving the reader to draw their own conclusions, and I really liked how those were written. I liked Wyatt as a character, if not as a person; honestly, his unapologetic, unreserved anger at the trauma he’s faced was refreshing. I liked where his storylines with Emyr and Briar were going, although a lot more was fumbled by the execution here. I liked a lot of the rep. But honestly, if it wasn’t for the audiobook’s narrator being so thoroughly entertaining, I would have DNFed this halfway at best. 

I love Wyatt as a narrator. He is so funny.

Book 10 for the
#TransRightsReadathon2024

CW: Wyatt is a vomiter when stressful things happen

Two people struggle with the balance of power their relationship has been built on. They must decide how they will allow the expectations of others to determine their course.

This is a solid YA fantasy, don’t get me wrong. I think it has some strong elements as well as some it could’ve executed better. But overall, I did enjoy reading it. I finished it in a day.

The queer representation was good. I empathized with Wyatt—his self-loathing, his anger, his tendency to lash out instead of facing his emotions, and his selfishness—even when he frustrated me SO MUCH.

I did like a lot of the secondary characters as well, but overall it seemed like the author was so focused on examining Wyatt’s internal struggles that not enough focus was spent on making any of the other characters very nuanced or multi-dimensional. (Tessa’s arc is, I think, meant to involve growth and development, but it comes across more as a clumsy and sudden about face.)

I also didn’t think the author did a good enough job of making us understand why Emyr found a marriage to Wyatt so necessary that he was willing to force him into it under penalty of death. It just didn’t feel fleshed out enough to read as believable, which gave the entire premise of the story a sort-of unmoored quality. (Maybe multiple POVs would have helped here?)

Plus I felt like a lot of the plot development got squished into the last 20% or so of the book, making it read very much like an attempt to quickly tie up lose ends and insert twists where they didn’t feel necessarily natural just to set up the events of the second book. (The big “aha!” moment at the end when the villain is confronted felt very similar to the end of a Scooby-Doo episode: “and I would’ve gotten away with it too, if it weren’t for you meddling kids!”)

Finally, a lot about the way witches in this story are born to (and subsequently rejected by) Fae families seemed to be an allegory for the queer experience, especially when at one point, that similarity is explicitly pointed out on page by Wyatt.

You have the Fae (conservative) businesses refusing service to the witches, then the guard (police) siding with the Fae when they protest/incite violence against witches using language most readers would immediately associate with white supremacists. 

But at the same time, this allegory breaks apart when you consider this magical realm is also supposed to exist WITHIN the current, human world (and that there also exist Fae queer people). If an allegory is meant to be a fictional representation of a real-world people, institution, or concept, how can that allegory exist in a fictional story where the very real thing it’s meant to be representing ALSO exists? So maybe it’s not meant to be allegory at all, I don’t know, but I found my confusion over it very distracting as I was reading.

I loved this book and it will definitely be one i reccomend to other people. A very sweet story with a strong queer backing, interesting plot, and gripping tension. While i felt the conclusion/reveal was a bit rushed and a little tooo perfect, u still enjoyed the story so much, and loved the enemies to lovers plot. 

Wyatt, a trans witch, it dragged back into the fae world he has so long avoided for the abuse and trauma that came it caused. When his fiancé (whom he left behind) shows up to take him back to the Fae Kingdom to see through their engagement to save the Kingdom, Wyatt is anything but helpful.

I have had this book on my radar for about a year now, and I finally read The Witch King for the #TransRightsReadathon. I am so happy I added this to my list.

I had a lot of fun with this one. Through humor-filled banter and action-packed adventure, H.E. Edgmon addresses important ideas of found family, the spectrum of gender and sexuality, and so much more. I have been slowly working my way up to reading more fantasy books, and this one did not disappoint. 

I will be recommending this title!

Finally got around to reading this, and I'm honestly happy I waited until both books were out. Then I could just immediately go to the next book without waiting! This is Edgmon's debut novel, and there is so much to like about it. For me, I think the best aspect of the writing was the characters. They each had their own voices, and even though there got to be a fairly large cast of characters, I didn't feel like I lost track of who anyone was. Plus, there's a very strong found family aspect, which we always love.

Wyatt and Emyr's evolving relationship is also what kept me hooked. Even though they've lost a lot of years, you can tell there's a strong connection and great chemistry between them. They have a rocky start, but Edgmon did a great job writing the both of them. It's why I immediately needed the next book as well!

The only aspect I would have changed is a bit more world building and a bit more clarity in the timeline. At times, I felt a bit lost and a few more details would have helped situate me a little more in this particular world.

Aside from that, I was absolutely hooked and I can't wait to see what happens in book 2!