A lot of people really love this book so take my opinions with a grain of salt. Perhaps this book isn’t bad so much as this book isn’t meant for anyone older than 16.
The world building is unique and gives the aesthetic of a sort of WW1 fantasy with a vague steampunk aesthetic and a magic system based on the existence of old gods. I’m not not into it. I tend to like inexplicable magic. The casualness of the magic is charming but we don’t explore it much further than the MCs being connected through magic typewriters that they use to send each other the corniest letters imaginable.
The writing is pretty evocative and Iris and Roman have interesting enough back stories but somehow these characters still feel pretty cheesy and underdeveloped. I hate you…oh you wrote me this letter…I love you…Let’s get married right now and lose our precious virginities.
We move through the death of Iris’ mother quite efficiently. Instead of becoming more exciting, the book somehow stalls when we move away from the city of Oath to the frontlines of the war. We continually hear about Iris being the most wonderful and evocative writer around without getting to read her actual articles, which feels lazy.
Enemies to lover’s is literally in the book description, which is terrible but probably not the authors fault. Book marketing is killing literature. Despite this description, Iris and Roman are never convincingly enemies nor is the developement of their epic romance particularly enthralling.
As for the war itself (which I can’t stress enough takes a backseat plot wise to the teens sending each other bad letters)…I have to say that it is both boring and intellectually cowardly worldbuilding to create a war where one side is unequivocally bad and one side is completely good and wholesome. You can get away with this sometimes in high fantasy by the creation of some pure evil fantasy race, but believe me when I say that Rebecca Ross is no Tolkien. The one’s fighting the war are humans on behalf of a goddess who is the good guy and a god who is the bad guy. The war itself closely resembles WW1 trench warfare. The frontline descriptions are a chore to get through and possibly why the pacing of the book feels so strange.
For the last half of this book I was rolling my eyes constantly and had to take consistent breaks to cringe before getting back to the story. It gets pretty bad once Iris realizes, as we clever readers have always known, that Roman and her are destined for each other.
I like fantasy. I like romance, but I do not like this book and in fact might even hate it a little.
by wiildgeese