Kolm musketäri haldjatega. Paha ei olnud, eriline elamus ka mitte. Kõva keskmine. ( )

Well Written, But Just Too Dry For Me

I can't believe how much of a DNF streak I am on right now, but thankfully this in no way reflects on the author or anything problematic in the book. I picked this up after enjoying Between Worlds, Wells' short story collection that tie to this and another series, and feeling the need to check the novels out. I will absolutely still be checking out the other series for sure.

Unfortunately, despite being well-written and being set in an interesting world, I just found the narrative too dry and the characters too hard to latch on to for me personally. I haven't read a lot of political intrigue and needing to be emotionally hooked and/ or invested in characters or events are all subjective factors in my not getting along with this. Not to mention my severe ADHD and diminished capacity due to the state of my mental and chronic health at the moment.

While I can't necessarily recommend it, I also wouldn't put anyone off trying it out, especially with it being in the Audible Included library with a bunch of Wells' other books. As I said before, I thoroughly enjoyed Between Worlds and I has a lot of fun with my cyborg sinking in autism, Murder bot. This just wasn't my cup of tea. ( )

I'm not sure what I expected going into this but knowing in advance that this was Wells' first book and that she obviously grew as an author afterward helped a little. All in all, there were chunks of this book I really loved, and large chunks of it I felt were slow and at times frustrating to get through. The book could probably be half its length, cutting out not just the drag of uninteresting setting description but also certain characters entirely. It's long and feels its length.

Why the four stars? Because I adore Roland. I found his story really wonderfully tragic and great and after maybe the 1/3 or halfway point in the story he was essentially the only character I cared about. Yeah he's terrible, but he's fun terrible. Thomas was largely enjoyable and Kade was great, except when her romance with Thomas was just too generically tropey. With the caveat that in the 90s, I imagine a big fantasy novel with a dashing male knight hero of color would have been really groundbreaking, and I think that's really cool. Even today, that's still a big deal because publishing and racism being what it is. It unfortunately suffers from otherwise being largely the same as many, many other fantasy stories I've read before. And heck I don't even mind tropeyness, I just found a romance I've seen 8000 times in a heavily straight novel way too boring. I'm trying to not be harsh on yet another younger woman/older man relationship but I'm so tired of them. Honestly I wish Kade had just run off with Falaise or become Falaise's lover or something. I unfortunately think Thomas could have been cut entirely to allow the story to focus on Kade, Roland, and Ravenna. I also thought Dontane could have been cut, just to give Grandier more time to shine. I feel like Grandier was so important but I know far more about the little we know of Dontane than Grandier, and I'm far more interested in Grandier's story. I've read stories with large casts and even enjoyed them, but this was just... a struggle at times, since even the enjoyable parts were shrunk under the book's heavy load. Also quite frankly I know it was the 90s but I heavily side-eye the use of the queer-coded villain(s). I'm just tired of it. There's a line in the story implying that Ile-Rein is more sexually open than elsewhere, which possibly includes non-straight sexualities, but when the only potentially queer characters are maybe Denzil and Roland, it's just hard to really be happy about what we're given.

The pacing was the biggest issue, and part of it is the muddied plot, with characters backtracking to do odd things that are pretty stupid and that they probably should have known was stupid, but you're probably in for 40-60 or more pages of them doing it and wondering when the story will move on. There are interesting subplots here that handle child abuse, dealing with trauma as an adult, suicide, bigotry, religious persecution, responsibility, lots of things. But too much of it is lost in other things. I even love all the Seelie and Unseelie stuff, but quite frankly this story was so ridiculously straight I kept thinking of Seelie and Unseelie stories that are overtly queer and far better paced and just overall more enjoyable. I know it was the 90s, but seeing the myriad ways this story could have been better, and knowing that this cast ends here (the next book is a time skip), just made reading it kind of disappointing.

There were also way too many typos. I know Wells reviewed this and edited it a bit when it was rereleased, but I kept catching typos and I normally don't see as many. I am glad she gets control over it at last, but this was annoying, particularly in the second half of the book.

Overall I can't say I recommend this. If you, like I, came to this from loving "The Murderbot Diaries", I would give this a pass, which I know is odd considering I gave it four stars. Supposedly the later novels in the series are better. If you want Martha Wells writing good fantasy, I'd recommend skipping the whole thing and just reading her Raksura series. If you want a queer story about machinations of the Seelie and Unseelie, with lots of politicking, some bone-headed soldiers, fun sexy times, and even some coups and wars, look up Pia Foxhall's Fae Tales Verse, starting with "Deeper into the Woods". Skip this. Or just reread "The Murderbot Diaries", they're amazing. ( )

Enemies internal, external, and magical threaten the kingdom of Ile-Rein, and saving the throne falls to Thomas Boniface, captain of the Queen's Guard, and Kade Carrion, half-mortal sister of the king. The Element of Fire is satisfyingly full of swashbuckling and mannerpunk, and while the plotting is rather slack, the book's vivid characters and baroque details compensate for the mercurial motivations and abrupt coincidences used to join one scene to another. ( )

La corte de Vienne es un hervidero de intrigas. Thomas Boniface, capitán de la Guardia de la Reina, que vela por la protección del palacio real, debe lidiar con las envidias de los otros cuerpos militares, como la Orden Albonita y la Guardia Cisternana. Pues Thomas, siguiendo la tradición, es amante de la reina; en este caso, de la reina viuda Ravenna, que conserva el poder a pesar de que su hijo Roland ha sido coronado rey. Alrededor de los miembros de la familia real se extiende una red de favoritos que conspiran constantemente por influencia y privilegio. Por si esto fuera poco, la medio hermana del rey, Kade Carrion la bruja, fruto de la aventura de su padre con la Reina del Aire y la Oscuridad, ha decidido volver a Vienne y dar a conocer su pretensión al trono. Y desde el exterior acecha el mago bisrano Urbain Grandier, dispuesto a desencadenar un ataque total contra el palacio con la ayuda de la Corte Profana de Fayre.