Lor must win, because if she loses, she dies. Or worse, she’ll be sent back into the hands of the Aurora King.
“Lor has spent the last twelve years of her life, most of her childhood, behind the stone walls of the Nostraza prison in the Aurora Kingdom. Her only desire is to find her freedom and make the Aurora King pay for all the torment she’s endured.
She is broken out of Nostraza during a prison riot and whisked away to Aphelion, the realm of the Sun King, in order to compete against her will in the trials of the Sun Queen – a set of deadly trials to find a new queen for the realm. Lor will be up against nine other Tributes, all more beautiful and cunning than her.
No one will tell her why she’s been chosen, why she has to keep her origin a secret from those around her, and just why the Sun King is so interested in her. But she does know that she must win at all costs – it’s the only way to amass the power she needs to free her loved ones still locked away in Nostraza and finally get revenge.
But nothing is quite as it seems and everybody is keeping secrets. Even Lor.”
Obligatory warning for spoilers – there will be aplenty in this review….Review? Rant? I guess that remains to be seen. Even the synopsis on the back cover of this book made the plot sound far more structured than what I actually discovered and genuinely feel duped.
So let’s get this show on the road:
The Who
Lor is our female main character. Please note, I used the word female – this matters. I’ll expand later. Lor, along with her two siblings Tristan and Willow, has spent the last twelve years of her life in a prison call Nostraza. Growing up behind the dingy walls of a prison housing the realm’s most notorious rapists and murders have forged Lor into something half feral, willing to do whatever it takes to survive and keep her family safe. We’re led to believe that Lor is a badass, that she’s seen some shit, and has no issue with violence and pain. Pain is what she knows, after all.
Enter Gabriel, the winged Fae who swoops her up out of Nostraza *for reasons*. Gabriel is the Captain of the Aphelion Guard and the Sun King’s right hand man. He’s in charge of Lor and making sure she’s ready for the trials – but he can’t stand her and refuses to answer any of her questions. Beyond that, I don’t really know much about this character – the author didn’t bother to flesh him out beyond the pretty annoying guy with wings that insults our main character.
Sadly, I can pretty much say the same thing for Atlas, the Sun King. What do we learn about him? He’s pretty – dazzling so. Everytime he was featured on the page, I had to read about his shining copper hair and his brilliant aqua eyes. His cut cheekbones and radiant skin. I think he might have abs too, miles of them, if we believe the author.
Atlas is looking for his queen, and so he wastes no time in going full fuckboy on the Tributes – smiling and saying all the right words, tasting the forbidden fruit of each, so on and so forth. Basically, we’re supposed to think he’s lovely and kind and the perfect ruler, but it was so obvious that he was just a douche canoe.
Honorable mentions go to side characters such as Lor’s lady-in-waiting Mag (who exists to covertly answer only some of Lor’s questions), Callias (who does her hair and gossips about court drama) and the other Tributes: Apricia, Griane, Elanor, Halo, Marici, Hesperia, Tesni, Ostara, and Solana. The author makes sure we know the skin tone and hair color of each Tribute, but unless they’re a preening bitch, we get no other characterization.
And then there’s Nadir. He’s the Aurora Prince and his only purpose in this story is to be curious about the prisoner (Lor) who disappeared during the riot and is believed dead. Why is he curious? Because the Aurora King specifically mentions making sure this specific prisoner is very, specifically, dead. Not at all subtle, right? So we get a handful of chapters in a jarring 3rd person POV with the plot device prince and his quest to figure out this importance of the missing/dead prisoner.
Side characters in his realm: The Aurora King – Rion, Nadir’s buddy/guard Mael, and his sister Amya – who is described in really basic Hot Topic mallgoth clothing everytime we see her. It’s very cringe and confusing. Let me explain why….
The Where
So this story takes place on a continent called Ouranos, with the majority of it playing out in the realm of Aphelion – which is the Sun King’s realm. While I’m under the impression that this is a fantasy world and we do get a tiny bit of worldbuilding later on, you could have told me that it takes place on an island like Fiji or Oahu and I would have believed you. Why?
Because there are a lot of inconsistencies in this world – referencing the prison warden’s zipper, for example. Feels modern. Talking about Nadir’s sleek black suit. Feels modern. There are also countless other modern and real world references that take me out of the fantasy immersion – such as jokes about going to therapy, foods like chocolate cake, scrambled eggs, roasted chicken, and even coffee. For some reason though, we can’t say the word salad.
“…some concoction of leaves and nuts and dried fruits covered in a creamy dressing.”
The Sun King’s palace is described like all inclusive resort, each view more breathtaking than the next, each room more luxurious than the next, and all the people Fae in sight are just heartstoppingly gorgeous. Seeing this world from Lor’s perspective gets tiring really fast, because she has to stop and use a million metaphors or similes to describe what she sees.
But we can’t forget The Aurora, the realm that imprisoned Lor and her siblings. The Aurora is described as always being nighttime with the only differentiation being that certain hours make the “aurora” – like the Northern Lights – very visible. In a harsh and violent realm, those colors are described as the only beautiful thing to be found there. Honestly, sounds a lot more interesting than Aphelion, but I digress. I simply haven’t read enough of this series for it to be ruined for me yet.
The other realms (or kingdoms) include Tor, The Woodlands, Alluvion, Celestria, and the Queendom of Heart. We don’t learn much of anything about these realms, but we do get vivid descriptions of what their rulers look like, because of course we do. Oh yeah, each realm has its own “artefact” too, but we don’t know what the purpose of them is. Yet.
The What
We open this story with Lor cussing up a storm and frantically searching for a missing bar of soap. The first few pages of this book were incredible, they set a clear tone and tried to establish this story as having a bit of a darker vibe. We meet Tristan and Willow, Lor’s two older siblings who are also in prison with her, and it is immediately implied that they are political prisoners of some variety but they are keeping their familial connection low-key. Solid start, I’m in.
Lor ends up absolutely savaging the girl who stole her bar of soap, and we get to see that Lor, as a character, is quick to anger and quick to resort to violence, but of course this has consequences – the prison warden sentences her to two weeks in the Hollow, a deep rectangular hole out in The Void, a forest rife with dark shadowy creatures.
Our heroine doesn’t fear much, but she recognizes a death sentence when she sees one. Very few prisoners survive the Hollow, let alone survive it for two whole weeks. And this is where the book takes a pretty serious nosedive.
There are ten pages – that’s two whole chapters – of Lor just wallowing in self pity and fear while sitting in the Hollow. Paragraphs of her describing hunger, aching pain, the cold in her limbs, and how parched she is, before she’s finally “rescued”. Her POV has become very excruciating at this point.
Imagine my relief and surprise when we get a new POV, this one in third person, with the Aurora Prince, Nadir. Unfortunately, Nadir is just a plot device this whole book, setting us up for a big reveal about Lor’s identity later. We didn’t need him at all, this all would have come out one way or another, but having read some other reviews of this book, I now understand that the author was trying to pull an ACOTAR and Nadir is just the Walmart edition of Rhysand.
When next she awakens, Lor is in a place that is sunny and beautiful. The number of times the word gold was used to describe something is off the charts. Everything is apparently gold in Aphelion, and Lor was plucked out of Nostraza to take part in the trials to become the Sun Queen. Why? Nobody will tell her, especially not her new warder, Gabriel. In fact, everyone is supposed to believe she’s from a place called The Umbra – a shadowy, poor section of Aphelion. For secret reasons, I guess.
She’s dolled up and sent before the Sun King, along with nine other Tributes who have been selected for the trials. Apparently, every time they also grab some poor girl from The Umbra as a token of…fairness? How often do they have these trials? No clue. How often is there a new king who needs to find his queen? No clue. How is the king of Aphelion even chosen? Again, none of this is explained.
So Lor spots the Sun King, Atlas, and is immediately smitten with him. He’s the most beautiful thing she’s ever seen and suddenly all her prior characterization has gone out the window. Tristan and Willow, who? This gorgeous male smiled at her and now she’s smitten.
Her warder Gabriel doesn’t think she stands a chance in winning the trials, because the Final Tribute never wins. In fact, these trials are potentially deadly and Tributes often die when they fail. Why? Again….that’s not really clear either. Especially since these trials kind of make no sense and have literally nothing to do with being “queenly”.
Lor meets the other Tributes during a weapons training session, where Atlas is present to watch. They’re all described as simpering females flipping their hair and making eyes at the king, and Lor’s internal monologue about these women is very misogynist and gives huge pick-me vibes. She beats one of them up and the King is so impressed that he invites her to dinner, where he proceeds to tell her that Aphelion has a top secret agreement with The Aurora to send Tributes back and forth whenever there are queen trials.
But we know this must be a lie, because Nadir is STILL looking for this missing prisoner and trying to find information on her, going so far as to snoop around in his father’s study. Why won’t the Aurora King won’t just tell him who he should be looking for and make this easy? Nadir can’t be a plot device otherwise.
So we finally get to the trials, ¾ of the way through the book, and they make no sense. There’s a history trivia trial, a gladiator style gauntlet, a seduction task at a masquerade ball, and finally a romp through a weird and convoluted series of illusions cast by the king himself.
In between these trials, we get dinner dates with Atlas and Lor, where he says all the right words to make her feel special and pretty and she eats it up like an idiot – not at all realizing that Atlas is a total fuckboy. Or, she does, but doesn’t care? Because he admits to doing all the same romantic stuff with the other Tributes – just like The Bachelor.
At the masquerade ball, Nadir shows up and discovers Lor is the missing prisoner after sharing a dance, but he doesn’t have a chance to do anything about it because Atlas boots him from the ball and whisks Lor away for another steamy night.
Finally, we get to the final trial and we wind up with a tie between Lor and Apricia. It’s time to stand in front of the Sun Mirror, a relic that’s supposed to choose who is meant to be the Sun Queen. Atlas reveals that he has known who Lor was all along, where she was really from, and that he stole her from the Aurora King because he wants her power – and that’s why he wants her as the Sun Queen. Quelle surprise.
Lor finally sees him for the horrible king that he really is and she is forced to stand in front of the Sun Mirror – which shows her a memory from her childhood and it becomes painfully obvious that she is a descendent of the long lost Heart Queen and can’t be the ruler of Aphelion. She has a different quest – find the missing crown of the Queendom of Heart.
But Atlas does not want to let her go and throws her into the dungeon. In the epilogue, she is broken out by none other than Nadir and his companions, Mael and Amya.
TLDR: The trials are bullshit, Lor has a secret identity that the villain king Atlas knows about and Nadir is the one who comes to rescue her at the end.
The Good
There are very few things that worked in this story. While we only got to meet them briefly, Tristan and Willow were the most likeable characters. There is a small amount of queer representation that isn’t horrible, but is also never fleshed out or really normalized.
And that’s….really it.
The Bad
This story is largely told in Lor’s POV and her characterization is so inconsistent. First she’s a hardened prisoner who can take a lot of pain and the next she’s tearing up over a plate of good food. For someone who spent most of her formative years behind bars, she sure seems to have a well-educated vocabulary – describing the sea as a treasure chest of sparkling jewels or the gauntlet adorned with cheerless Yuletide decorations. Did they have treasure chests or holiday decor in the prison?
The dialogue is atrocious in this book and the swearing far too modern to really fit into the context of a fantasy world.
“Zerra, you two are so damaged.”
“Shut up.”
“You know, therapy would be a lot more beneficial….”
Riveting stuff, am I right?
Lor seems to waffle a lot between feeling like she deserves the power that comes with being the Sun Queen and then feeling like she’s less than nothing and all other Tributes are so much prettier and more deserving than her – and this goes back and forth multiple times throughout the book. She’s also weirdly shocked when Tributes die or there is any depiction of violence – isn’t she used to that from being in the prison? Isn’t she supposed to hardened and desensitized? It doesn’t make much sense.
Nadir is also incredibly stupid – like, all the signs are pointing to their “missing prisoner” being in Aphelion but he goes to great lengths to assume she could be literally anywhere else. He didn’t think her sudden disappearance and then the commencement of the trials were a strange coincidence? Their meeting at the masquerade ball was so contrived and cheap. It’s just bad storytelling all around.
Final Verdict: Rant
Have you read this book? Please share your thoughts and comments down below!
On The Cusp 