#instalove🌶

[bn-brightflower]

Court of Blood and Bindings

By Lisette Marshall

My rating: 5/5

Spiciness: 🌶🌶🌶/5

Kindle: Yes

Kindle Unlimited: Yes

Paperback: Yes

Amazon Link

Trigger Warnings: Violence, War Crimes, Torture, Gore, Mentions of Child Abuse

Who I'd recommend it for: fans of dark romance. And I do mean dark. Our MMC, Creon, the "Silent Death", has done many, many things that do not fall into the forgivable category. If you are unable to empathize with a character without forgiving them, I would not recommend this series.

Summary: Emelin (the FMC) has always been different. She has color magic, something that famously belongs to the fae and not the humans she lives among, and is told that she inherited it from a distant relative on her mother's side. She hides her magic, but remains an outcast.

On the day that the humans are celebrating a ward they've completed, meant to keep the fae (whom they are essentially enslaved to) away, she is caught using her magic by one such fae.

When she wakes in the morning, she finds not only that her home village is burning, but that she's been spared. She is whisked away by the ominous fae that saw her use magic, the Silent Death, the most fearsome and cruel known fae whose entire purpose is enforcing The Mother's will, the fae that rules all the land.

Emelin finds herself taken to the Fae Isles where she is presented a deal; help the Silent Death kill The Mother and he will protect her, and help her find the real birth parents that she inherited her magic from. But can she trust him? What, exactly, is the motivation for The Mother's most trusted tool to call for her death?

~~ SPOILERS AHEAD ~~

Things I Loved:

I genuinely loved so much of this book.

The color magic was such a neat and unique system that I don't think I've come across before. The fae do not have limitless, omnipotent powers; their power is fed by colors and they pull the colors from objects around them. Once the color is gone, so is their magic.

The Silent Death - Creon. I truly loved his character. I liked the scent of mystery and the fact that the evils he's done are not excused, nor does he attempt to defend himself. I appreciated the fact that the small kindnesses he's done are pulled out not by him bringing attention to them, but because of the evidence of them.

Emelin - I really appreciated a strong FMC that isn't "too stupid to live." She had a strong sense of morals but doesn't run out of her way to cause herself undue trouble for half of the book. I was able to empathize with both her and Creon, which I've found rare in these books.

The actual relationship felt like it evolved naturally enough. While the lust is there from the start, there was no instalove. It felt real in a way that seems to be missing from many romances I've read.

And, more ultimately, the lack of rape threats. This genre is saturated with books that tend to use rape as the ultimate threat against the characters, and its refreshing that this one lacked that aspect. Things can be terrible and unforgivable without rape.

Things that Could Have Been Better:

Creon has no voice, and Emelin teaches him a form of sign language. I enjoyed this aspect but it felt very rushed. At times, his dialogue seems far too flowery and quick to allow for that sort of communication. There are points at which the author seems to remember that Emelin has to look at him to talk and quickly writes it in, but other times where it reads like standard dialogue without quotation marks.

Speaking of: QUOTATION MARKS! This author uses single quotes instead of double for dialogue. I'm not sure why. It isn't quite as distracting as I thought it would be, but it is a slight pet peeve of mine.

[lubashivaya]

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