I was surprised just how much I enjoyed this novel. Not for any real reason, I just didn't expect to find myself so drawn in with the character's plight(s). I felt so bad for Soren, and to a lesser degree Strake. Well to be fair I should have felt equally bad for Strake all things considered, but we saw how deeply the entire ordeal hurt and diminished Soren, Strake we got bits and pieces as Soren saw him.

This begins as a fairly standard fantasy--Soren finds out that she isn't as superfluous as she thought she was, a short quest is had, heroics are done and then she meets her Rathen (Strake). Thing is neither of them are quite what the other expects (or really wants) plus they don't know how to get along.

Her Rathen, the first in centuries I might add, is surly, bitter and angry. He was never meant to be King. He was never meant to be period. Unfortunately the Rose that has protected Darest since the earliest days has also become a problem that Darest can't control. Its become an entity unto itself and it will do what its programmed to do--no matter the cost.

I thought the twists that Host tossed in were clever. Soren and her Rathen are given a very real reason why they can not instantly become best friends and allies. Neither trusts the other, despite the imperative set upon them by the Rose and it creates a tension that effects everything. I also appreciated the menace of the Rose that slowly unfolded. In the truest sense of the phrase 'good intentions pave the way to hell', the Rose took its duty--to announce the next Rathen Heir and bring the Champion to the Heir to protect Darest--to the extreme.

Host was careful not to cross any lines, or if she did (one instance in particular comes to mind from the beginning when Soren traveled with Strake) she made it explicitly clear the feelings of all involved. In her fantasy world gender doesn't particularly matter as far as romance and love goes. Female/female, male/male, threesomes or more are all treated equally and are entirely the business of those involved. As far as anything goes the world is about gender-neutral as possible in all aspects.

I admit to hoping that Soren and Strake worked things out. I grew a bit frustrated every time progress was made and suddenly flung backwards for any reason at all. A lot of it could be laid on Strake's doorstep; he had a lot to come to terms with even before the Rose's machinations started to become more overtly sinister. This doesn't excuse Soren, she started to become irritating with her 'maybe if I change this way, he will tolerate me better' attitude, but Strake by far takes entirely too long to come to grips with things. ( )

Thoughtful and interesting. ( )

Well, this was different. It's has some expected tropes of fantasy fiction, what with long lost monarchs, conniving regents, mages, champions, and enchanted roses. But it wasn't the story I was expecting. And this is, for the most part, a good thing.

Favorite things:
Non-villainous bisexual characters. Main characters who are bisexual. Culture primarily bisexual.

Tripartite marriages - mostly for the purpose of adding a third partner to a same sex relationship for the purpose of engendering children - but not ruling out loving and romantic relationship between all three persons.

The language used to describe the enchantments reminded me of computer programs. The enchantments are engineered to perform the way they do. There are rules they follow, and those rules sometimes conflict or reiterate in unexpected ways.

Aristide: He is just so unusual. Quiet, smart, closed off, a mystery. But somehow everything seems to keep coming back to him.

Worst things:
I dislike the author's choice to include a supernatural rape scene as a pivotal plot point. (This is the primary reason for the mark down from five to four stars on a book I otherwise really liked.) The enchantment controls the two main characters, Soren & Aluster, and forces them to have intercourse for the purpose of conceiving an heir to the monarchy. This results in a rape scene where both characters are victims but can't help but perceive the other as the aggressor, even thought they realize quite quickly that the enchantment was the "rapist." The author does a good job of allowing both characters to express their emotional responses to this attack, both internally and eventually to each other, and then to move beyond it. And the attack provides them both with personal not just political or theoretical reasons to attempt to end the enchantment, despite the potential cost being extremely high. And the unborn child is an important plot point as well, which is a bit disappointing too. As mentioned she handled this well enough I didn't throw the book across the room and vow to never read another novel by the author - which is what I have done when I feel rape is included gratuitously, lazily, horrifyingly, or casually. She at least made me think hard about where I draw lines about what I'm willing to experience in a story and what I'm not. Which has some value. I really do wish she'd found another way to motivate her characters than this. I am glad the characters were able to move beyond the attack and come to be friends, but I'm don't feel it was well done to end with them being lovers. I think that is too much of a reach and not terribly believable. Perhaps I also would have preferred Soren or Aluster to breach Aristide's reserve because that would have been more interesting and would have subverted the romance trope. ( )

Soren's position at the Darest court is a joke. She was proclaimed Champion of the Rose, the protector of the Rathen kings--but there have been no Rathen kings in Darest for two hundred years. Her status as ignored non-entity abruptly changes when a blooming rose appears in the palace's magical garden, signaling the birth of a Rathen heir. Soren knows that the regents of Darest will do anything to maintain their position, and she needs to get to the heir before their agents do. But when Soren tracks down the heir, she finds not a baby, but a full-grown man. Strake was lost in time in the fae woods during a hunting party hundreds of years ago. Although he was just a minor prince in his own time, now he is the land's last hope. Because the myths are right--only Rathen rule can avert the terrible doom that afflicts all of Darest.

Soren and Strake have an uneasy relationship, made harder by the Rose that twines through them. The first Rathen ruler created the Rose as a protection for the Rathens that would follow, but over the centuries it has gradually transformed from tool into something almost sentient. To protect the Rathen bloodline, it mind-controls Strake and Soren into sex, leaving her pregnant and each of them deeply traumatized and bitter about the other. The rape is utterly without details (in fact, I didn't realize what had happened until several pages later), but the characters deal with the emotional and physical aftereffects for the rest of the novel.

The Rose has other powers, too. With its magic, Soren is the only human who can sense the physical presence of the doom that stalks Darest. She, Strake, and the former regent's heir Aristide, work to halt Darest's decline and forstall the lethal magic that seeks Strake's death. They are beset with intrigue from neighboring countries and internal jockeying for power.

I liked Soren, although I wished I had a harder handle on her characterization. I think the trouble is that I'm used to characters falling into a category: scholarly, battle-hungry, fascinated by magic, family-oriented. Soren isn't particularly bookish, doesn't have combat training or inclination, can't do magic...mostly she rides her horse, works, and worries about Strake. Her internal workings are clear to the reader, but her outward seeming remained a bit opaque. Strake is pretty straightforward: smart, a bit snarly, dealing with a great deal of shock and trauma. Their romance comes kinda out of no-where, and was the only thing I didn't like about the book. The minor characters have charm and verve of their own--I was an avowed fan of Aspen from the very first. Aristide is the character I was most drawn to. He's so self-contained and perfect that the court calls him the Diamond, and stories of how he deals with those who cross him are legendary. At the start of the story I assumed he would be the villain, but his role is far more interesting.

I really loved the magic in this book. It has a sort of dream-logic to it, and has an understated power, the kind where you only realize how impossible something is when you glance at it a second time. There's one scene, when Soren meets the fairy queen, that was particularly astounding. And I really liked that the story deals with the dark sides to ordained rule and magical tools in a really thoughtful manner.

Oh! And I nearly forgot to mention, because it's so casual and unremarked, that this is a completely queer universe. Everyone has lovers of either sex (although some people seem to have preferences) without it even needing a name, triads are as legal a relationship as couples, and both genders are perfectly equal in status and in roles. Love it!

The first five chapters are available to sample on goodreads or the author's website, but beware: they so intrigued me that I bought this book, and I am so frugal I buy a book once every five years. It is quickly, dangerously, enthralling. ( )

Darest is a country in decline. When it still had Rathens and Rathen Champions, it was powerful, but it's been two hundred years since the death of the last Rathen. It's a shock to everyone when the Rathen Rose reacts to Soren, a nobody in the court, and proclaims her the newest Rathen Champion. Soren does her duty and begins her search for a baby Rathen who couldn't possibly exist, knowing that, once she finds the child, they'll both be in danger. While Darest may need its Rathens, Darien politics has moved on. The Regent and her son would not be happy to be displaced.

Strake, the Rathen Soren finally finds, is a grown man rather than the child Soren expected, and is filled with anger and bitterness. The Rose unfortunately makes things worse. Despite their strained relationship, Strake and Soren will have to work together if they want to survive Darien politics, the machinations of the Rose, and the being intent on killing the last Rathen.

This is one of those times when pretty cover art led to me reading something I probably should have passed by. This book ended up taking me about four months to get through, because the strained relationship between Soren and Strake was so unpleasant that just about any other book appealed to me more. If e-books were a thing you could sell or donate, I'd probably just have given up and offloaded this one.

I knew from reviews that, fairly early on, the Rose would force Soren to rape Strake. I though I could deal with that, since the scene wasn't the least bit graphic, but the aftermath wore on me. Strake was completely repulsed by Soren. Even though he knew that she'd had no choice, that the Rose had briefly taken her over and used her like a puppet, she was the one that he'd seen and felt. He'd been taken away from everyone and everything that he knew, and by his perception of time his lover had recently been killed right in front of him. This was the last straw.

Soren hated the part she'd played in the rape, but she'd essentially been raped too. She was more under the Rose's control than it was under hers. It could take her will at any moment and force her to do whatever it wished. Forcing her to rape Strake had been its way of continuing the Rathen line. Not only did she have to face all the anger and revulsion Strake turned towards her because she made a better target than the Rose, she also had to deal with being unwillingly pregnant with Strake's child.

I couldn't bring myself to like either one of these characters. I understood why Strake directed his hatred almost entirely towards Soren, but I hated how often he seemed to forget that this was terrible for her too. At one point, he almost raped Soren to pay her back for what she'd done to him, and I found myself wishing Soren had used the Rose to tear him to pieces. Soren understood why Strake hated her so much and was bitter about being nothing more than the Rose's Champion Brood Mare – but she also found herself attracted to Strake. I wasn't sure if her interest in Strake was due to the Rose's influence or not, but it mixed so terribly with all the other emotions between Soren and Strake that it made my skin crawl.

And, unfortunately, it did blossom into love. If I have the timeline right, Strake and Soren hadn't even known each other much more than a month. It didn't feel like enough time for them to have gotten over all the ugliness between them. I'd have been far more comfortable with a blossoming relationship between one of them and Aristide. There were some indications that he might end up as their third, but the primary romance was between Soren and Strake, and it absolutely didn't work for me.

I'll wrap this up by going over some of the things that did work for me. Aristide intrigued me a lot, and I wish Höst had included a glimpse at his thoughts. In public, he was slick, sharp, and sparkling, the perfect courtier. In private, he was completely closed off – all his emotions locked inside himself, and no friends, lovers, or anyone in his life that he seemed to care about. I'm crossing my fingers that he plays a significant part in the next book, because I want to know more about what's going on inside his head.

I also liked the world of this book. If it hadn't been for Soren and Strake's strained relationship, I think I'd have enjoyed the dangerous politics. Crumbling, once powerful Darest was an interesting place, and I liked getting to learn what part the Rose, Rathen, and Champion played in everything. Although Soren was largely useless – far less politically adept than Aristide, magic-less, and unable to wield the sword she'd inherited as the new Champion – the Rose did give her a few abilities. She could see everywhere in the palace, at any time, and she eventually figured out how to use the Rose to defend herself and Strake.

This was also one of the few books I've read where bisexuality and polyamorous relationships are so common and so much a part of the world that none of the characters even bat an eyelash about it all. Those in same-sex relationships who wanted children would either come to an agreement with someone of the opposite sex in order to have a child, or they'd find someone with whom they could have a more lasting relationship. If there was any angst, it was entirely due to the way personalities meshed or didn't mesh.

All in all, Champion of the Rose didn't work for me. The rape colored everything and made this a largely unpleasant read, and Strake's progression from anger and revulsion to acceptance and love happened too soon in his and Soren's relationship to be believable. That said, I'm willing to give Höst's books another shot, and it's quite possible that I could even enjoy the next book in this duology, especially since reviews only mention Aspen, Soren's friend, and Aristide. (Which is good, since I already own the next book, as well as several others by Höst. That's what I get for buying a bunch of books by a new-to-me author.)

(Original review, with read-alikes, posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.) ( )