Review: Swordcrossed, by Freya Marske

Mattinesh Jay, dutiful heir to his struggling family business, needs to hire an experienced swordsman to serve as best man for his arranged marriage. Sword-challenge at the ceremony could destroy all hope of restoring his family's wealth, something that Matti has been trying—and failing—to do for the past ten years. What he can afford, unfortunately, is part-time con artist and full-time charming menace Luca Piere.
Luca, for his part, is trying to reinvent himself in a new city. All he wants to do is make some easy money and try to forget the crime he committed in his hometown. He didn't plan on being blackmailed into giving sword lessons to a chronically responsible—and inconveniently handsome—wool merchant like Matti. However, neither Matti's business troubles nor Luca himself are quite what they seem.

"You broke me out of the box."

Freya Marske's Swordcrossed is a low-stakes romantasy with very little fantasy elements and a focus on fencing and wool. Set in a queernormative world, it follows workaholic Matti as he struggles to juggle his merchant family duties and faces a wedding he doesn't really want. His chance meeting with swordsman Luca will help him find a better balance in his life and allies he wasn't sure he had.

This is a cozy story with great things to say about managing familial expectations and finding one's own way, even when one's family is supportive. It's also a fun adventure featuring interesting customs such as the one about using duelists during formal events such as a wedding, which makes for nice shenanigans.

The progression of the attraction between the two main characters was handled beautifully and led to many steamy scenes, but there was some well-placed angst as well. The plot truly is minimal, and the twists are pretty obvious, but sometimes that's all you need. I will say that the fact this was written before the remarkable Last Binding trilogy is made clear by the simplicity of the story, but it's not inherently a bad thing.

Swordcrossed is a fun romp that will make you learn many things about the wool industry.

✨ 4 stars

Review: A Power Unbound, by Freya Marske

Jack Alston, Lord Hawthorn, would love a nice, safe, comfortable life. After the death of his twin sister, he thought he was done with magic for good. But with the threat of a dangerous ritual hanging over every magician in Britain, he’s drawn reluctantly back into that world. Now Jack is living in a bizarre puzzle-box of a magical London townhouse, helping an unlikely group of friends track down the final piece of the Last Contract before their enemies can do the same. And to make matters worse, they need the help of writer and thief Alan Ross.
Cagey and argumentative, Alan is only in this for the money. The aristocratic Lord Hawthorn, with all his unearned power, is everything that Alan hates. And unfortunately, Alan happens to be everything that Jack wants in one gorgeous, infuriating package. When a plot to seize unimaginable power comes to a head at Cheetham Hall―Jack’s ancestral family estate, a land so old and bound in oaths that it’s grown a personality as prickly as its owner―Jack, Alan and their allies will become entangled in a night of champagne, secrets, and bloody sacrifice . . . and the foundations of magic in Britain will be torn up by the roots before the end.

"Broken items wanted to be whole". Freya Marske's A Power Unbound sticks the landing with this exhilarating conclusion to the Last Binding trilogy. A new set of main characters takes center stage, but this time the protagonists of the two previous volumes are more entangled with the plot and even undergo more development as this big, queer found family races against time to unveil a plot that could destroy everything.

After the enclosed setting of the second book, we find ourselves once again in England, between estates and magical parliament; we also see poorer parts of the city as Alan, who was introduced in the previous book, is an immigrant with a big family he works hard to support. This allows the book to introduce themes of class and power dynamics that work very well in the general context of the series and give it more depth. The journalist who's secretly a writer of queer erotica finds his perfect partner in bisexual Lord Hawthorn, as the two of them slowly dismantle their walls over the course of the book and a couple of intense sex scenes.

Every loose thread from the first two books is accounted for in this finale that asks questions about family, power, and abuse. The magic is made bigger and more interesting as the roots of power are explained and explored; every character has a moment to shine, from the medium that facilitates a heart-wrenching heart-to-heart with a ghost, to the nobleman who once thought he wasn't as powerful as his peers, from the seer to the powerful actress to the one who got violently torn from his own magic. And then there's Alan, who isn't magical but who can disrupt magic, and the surrounding cast of magicians, friends and foes, enstranged family and abusive brothers, and mothers who'll tear the world apart for their children.

The book weaves a rich tapestry that's much more deeper for its focus on land and contracts, the places where we live that protect us, and the free contracts between two people. It's a honest exploration of unconventional desires, woven together by the books written by Alan and mentioned in the first two installments: a thread that slowly reveals itself and makes the whole series almost a metanarrative.

A Power Unbound is a powerful exploration of love and the ties that bind.

✨ 4 stars

📚📚📚 IF YOU LOVE THIS, YOU MIGHT LIKE:

* The Magpie Lord, by K.J. Charles

for: Edwardian England, power dynamics

Review: A Restless Truth, by Freya Marske

 

The most interesting things in Maud Blyth's life have happened to her brother Robin, but she's ready to join any cause, especially if it involves magical secrets that may threaten the whole of the British Isles. Bound for New York on the R.M.S. Lyric, she's ready for an adventure.
What she actually finds is a dead body, a disrespectful parrot, and a beautiful stranger in Violet Debenham, who is everything—a magician, an actress, a scandal—Maud has been trained to fear and has learned to desire. Surrounded by the open sea and a ship full of loathsome, aristocratic suspects, they must solve a murder and untangle a conspiracy that began generations before them.

"A person is a theatre". Freya Marske's A Restless Truth is the delightful sequel to 2021's exhilarating A Marvellous Light. The author makes the daring decision to change the beloved protagonists from the previous novel, and write about the sister of one of them. The plot follows some time after what happened in the first novel, as the mystery gradually unfolds and our heroes try to find out the truth.

Maud is different than her brother; she'd headstrong and very stubborn, but she's been sheltered all her life. She finds her match in the older performer Violet, whose walls are high and impenetrable. Their short game of seduction - the book takes place over the course of a week - is thrilling, as the more experienced Violet shows Maud that women can be with other women and Maud is allowed to explore her own attraction. Like the previous book, this one is definitely on the spicy side, with a few descriptive sex scenes that range from tender to intense. Maud and Violet grow to have a complex and nuanced relationship as they navigate their respective boundaries and their places in life.

The action unfolds in a single setting, the ship crossing the Atlantic. This allows for a sharper focus and a smidge of claustrophobia, which works well for the unfolding of a mystery, but also doesn't help relate to the characters as we have so little time to watch them interact. In contrast, the previous book excelled in showing the slow dismantling of the characters' walls together with the unfurling of the central mystery. The first book also had more worldbuilding, whereas here we don't discover much more of the bigger world, although we see some tantalising details of how other countries' magic works. English magicians use a complex series of hand gestures that remind me of Lev Grossman's The Magicians novels.

The supporting cast steals the scene sometimes. We meet again Lord Hawthorn, who had an unfortunate introduction in the first novel, and a delightful new character, Ross. The other passengers of the ship are a wild variety of characters, and it's fun to slip into the whudunit game together with the protagonists. There's daring action and investigations and misunderstandings aplenty, making this a solid sequel and a much-needed middle-book as it sets the stage for the final book of the trilogy, which will feature other two characters.

A Restless Truth is an incredibly fun read with a lavish prose that feels like an embrace.

✨ 4 stars