Hi, loves! 💖
I’m back with two mini reviews of two SFF books that are very heavy on their romantic subplots… with one of them I’d actually consider to be more of a romance than a SFF!
Both of these books, unfortunately, were just okay reads for me. (I promise I have reviews of series I genuinely loved coming up… once I find the words I need to describe them! 🫣) One book I enjoyed on the surface level, but found a lot of flaws in once I really sat down and thought about it, and the other I was iffy about while reading, but had themes and ideas that I appreciated.
As always, these were supposed to be mini reviews but ended up being full reviews. 😂 I hope you enjoy and that they help you decide whether these books are worth reading or not.
Let’s get to the books!
Heartless Hunter
Genres: Fantasy, Romance, Fantasy Romance
Publisher: Wednesday Books
Release Date: February 20, 2024
Pages: 416
On the night Rune’s life changed forever, blood ran in the streets. Now, in the aftermath of a devastating revolution, witches have been diminished from powerful rulers to outcasts ruthlessly hunted due to their waning magic, and Rune must hide what she is.
Spending her days pretending to be nothing more than a vapid young socialite, Rune spends her nights as the Crimson Moth, a witch vigilante who rescues her kind from being purged. When a rescue goes wrong, she decides to throw the witch hunters off her scent and gain the intel she desperately needs by courting the handsome Gideon Sharpe – a notorious and unforgiving witch hunter loyal to the revolution – who she can’t help but find herself falling for.
Gideon loathes the decadence and superficiality Rune represents, but when he learns the Crimson Moth has been using Rune’s merchant ships to smuggle renegade witches out of the republic, he inserts himself into her social circles by pretending to court her right back. He soon realizes that beneath her beauty and shallow façade, is someone fiercely intelligent and tender who feels like his perfect match. Except, what if she’s the very villain he’s been hunting?
This entire book gave off the same vibes as that one scene in Aladdin where Jasmine pretended to seduce Jafar, and it made me feel the same way I feel whenever I watch that scene—oddly hypnotized, but also kind of uncomfortable.
✨ The story—
I would argue that this book’s true intention was to be a romance above all else. It’s a fantasy-romance and not a romantic fantasy.
That being said, if you’re going to read this for action and plot… look away. The plot didn’t really pick up until around 70% in. We don’t really get scenes with the FMC (Rune) saving witches, or the MMC (Gideon) hunting witches. A lot of this book was just scheming and playing cat-and-mouse. None of the twists were particularly shocking, either.
The world-building? Practically non-existent. The idea behind the magic system was interesting, but not thoroughly explored. I know nothing about the setting as well.
The romance, though, I thought was actually done pretty well. I enjoyed the push-and-pull between the two MCs, and I found the tension between them to be quite sexy. I liked the blurred lines between the MCs thinking that they were both just playing each other, and the MCs genuinely getting into the flirting. Was it deep and was it love? No. It was attraction. It was a fun time if I think about it like this.
In my mind, I blocked out the love triangle thing. See my little rant section below bc I explained my thoughts on the third member of the love triangle there.
✨ The characters—
The main characters were extremely flat and dry. Again, the book clearly focused too much on the romance between them that it didn’t have time to develop them as individuals. We got bits and pieces of Gideon’s history with witches, and even less hints at Rune’s upbringing. I can’t even describe their personalities outside of the generic brooding bro (Gideon) and righteously naive (Rune).
I wish I could tell you about the side characters, but I’ve forgotten them all already.
✨ The writing and the atmosphere—
The writing was very simplistic, and while that made it very easy to read and very easy to get into the right vibes, this book won’t win any points for brilliant writing. It borderlined on choppy sometimes.
✨ Now let me rant about this one thing— (minor spoilers for this section!)
This book was vile for its use of Alex as a plot device. This character had no point in the book other than to be used as a catalyst for actions that the MCs had to do. He had no real personality aside from being “the nice one”. I was genuinely pissed at how his character played into the ending. 😀👍 I would have enjoyed this book more if he wasn’t in it at all (and that’s saying something, because I’m always a fan of “the nice one”).
If this character was taken out of the story, I would have given it 3 stars. I could get past the barely-there world-building and the dry characters, but this character and the love triangle was what made me want to bang my head against the wall.
✨ In conclusion—
This story is a romance first and foremost. If you’re looking for a fantasy book with an amazing plot, intricate world-building and memorable characters, you won’t find that here. But if you just want to read a mindless romance with a touch of magic and historical vibes, you might enjoy this.
Iron Widow
Genres: Fantasy, Science Fiction, Romance
Publisher: Penguin Teen
Release Date: September 21, 2021
Pages: 394
Rep: Polyamorous relationship between the MCs (F/M/M)
The boys of Huaxia dream of pairing up with girls to pilot Chrysalises, giant transforming robots that can battle the mecha aliens that lurk beyond the Great Wall. It doesn’t matter that the girls often die from the mental strain.
When 18-year-old Zetian offers herself up as a concubine-pilot, it’s to assassinate the ace male pilot responsible for her sister’s death. But she gets her vengeance in a way nobody expected—she kills him through the psychic link between pilots and emerges from the cockpit unscathed. She is labeled an Iron Widow, a much-feared and much-silenced kind of female pilot who can sacrifice boys to power up Chrysalises instead.
To tame her unnerving yet invaluable mental strength, she is paired up with Li Shimin, the strongest and most controversial male pilot in Huaxia. But now that Zetian has had a taste of power, she will not cower so easily. She will miss no opportunity to leverage their combined might and infamy to survive attempt after attempt on her life, until she can figure out exactly why the pilot system works in its misogynist way—and stop more girls from being sacrificed.
You know I love my subversive and feminist reads. In theory, I should have absolutely loved this… but this was SO PREACHY and superficial. And while there were many things I loved and appreciated in this book, it just wanted to do so many things at once that it ended up being kind of messy and oversimplified.
Let me explain. Like I said, this book was feminist, but it presented feminism in a way that was black-and-white, in the if you don’t hate men then you’re not feminist type of way. AND it did so in a way that was as if the book was giving me a sermon. The FMC couldn’t get through one conversation without saying something with feminist undertones. I know I’ve been complaining about books that are so long for no good reason, but this book needed an extra 200 pages to tackle this delicately and with more nuance.
It also needed those extra pages for actual plot and world-building. This book is very fast-paced and action-packed, and if you like that, then you’ll enjoy this. I’ve seen this being marketed for fans of Pacific Rim, which I would say is pretty accurate because I also didn’t like that movie. 😂 I finished this book not understanding much about the world, and not knowing what we were supposed to be leading up to.
The concept was definitely cool though. I loved the idea of these giant robots needing a pair of pilots, and that it was a battle of the minds to see if the pilots would survive powering the robots. HOWEVER, I do wish we got a genuinely good explanation for why this was the case… and not the explanation we got. 🤷♀️
Okay, let’s finally talk characters. It was actually shocking to me how we got a strongly feminist FMC who was so shallow. Zetian has no personality aside from being aggressive. We have two MMCs, though I couldn’t describe either of them anyway. They’re both kind of irrelevant to the bigger picture. All three MCs are way too perfect and edgy and have no depth. I will give these characters brownie points for wanting to change the system as a whole though, and not just their own personal situations. I respect that a lot.
The romance made me so confused—NOT because it’s a polyamorous romance (that’s one of the things I like about this book; like go off queen for giving us a poly relationship rather than a love triangle), but because it didn’t make sense. None of the pairs made sense, so they didn’t make sense as a threesome. There was no chemistry to be seen from any angle, and this was super insta-… it’s not love. I don’t even know what it is.
So who should read this book? If you like your action non-stop, or if you like female rage to the highest degree… this is for you!
Let’s chat!
Have you read these books? If you haven’t, do you think you’ll enjoy them if you do? What are some well-written SFF books with romance that you’d recommend to me?
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