92 pages
Published 2020
Read May 13
Rating: 4 out of 5
A gorgeous and assured sword-and-sorcery novella. Former street kid Aaliyah, now a renowned general, had helped her childhood companion and current lover Odessa, a mage who wields power over stone, overthrow the corrupt Iron King five years ago. Now, returning in glory from conquest, Aaliyah sees her city suffering under her lover's control, the promises she had made to better their people's lives unfulfilled. The tale is relatively straightforward, but the characters and setting hum with life and glitter with magic. I'm learning to appreciate the novella as a self-contained form with its own strengths and its own pace, but I really can't help but wish that this book were longer, that we could have gotten more time to let everything breathe.
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