My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.
Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below.
The Sorcerer's Concubine by Lidiya Foxglove B-
Lidya Foxglove is a full time self-published author of romance fantasy, much of it probably what they call, spicy romance. Starting out as a traditionally published YA author, she shifted to self-publishing adult romance fantasy that were written to market. Which is to say, writing books whose tropes she felt were trending, such as "Fairy Tale Heat" Like Beauty and the Goblin King, plus, reverse harem, A Witch Among Warlocks, magic school story, and Fae Bride stories and darker Vampire Clan stories... Well you get the idea, writing books that sell, writing up to ten book a year, for some years.
Tired of writing to market, and eager just to write the stories she really wants to write, set in a world that she's been imagining since she was a girl, she started a YouTube channel to hopefully supplement her income so that she can write quirkier stories that she knows will be harder to market. This story is set in her world, but was written, apparently in several forms, this being the truest. It is the first book of a trilogy.
As for the story itself; the protagonist, Velsa, is literally a "doll person", an animated-by-magic life-sized living doll made of wood, stuffing, and fabric heavily modified with the use of magic. They are said to be animated by the souls of people who did not make the cut to get into heaven, and are being given a second chance to earn this reward by serving humans in various roles as slaves. In Velsa's case, she was made to be a concubine. These living dolls are not considered persons, have no rights, and are looked down on by the humans of the land, and treated like things with no feelings at all.
Velsa, does have feelings, and as it turns out special powers - including teletherapy, for which she wears a golden collar to suppress, as it is a power that is feared in that land - though it is common in their enemy's nation. She is purchased by Grau, a young sorcerer who is instantly attracted to her. The story then follows them over the next six months as they fall in love, as Grau takes her to the military camp on the border where he is to do six months of duty to get some money to continue his study of magic.
As usual, I won't go into the details of the plot, though this is mostly a character centric novel focused on Velsa's experiences once she leaves the house she "grew up" in, and all the discrimination, hate, indifference she experiences as an animated "thing" that was built for one purpose; the sexual gratification of the man who buys her. Foxglove is a seasoned writer who brings Velsa, the living doll fully alive. And this story is clearly a work of love. Grau, who buys her, is more or less the ideal man, kind, considerate, very honorable. Someone who not only treats her as a real person, but has honorable ambitions for her, protecting her as much as he can throughout this story.
As a story, it is a pretty cozy story mixed with some brutal moments. The pacing is pretty leisurely, with some time spent world building, but not over much. It is fairly episodic, the string of incidents leading to a climax of sort, but clearly book one of a trilogy. While I enjoyed it, I'm not it's target audience. Both romances and fantasies are genres that are not high on my list of preferred reading, and a combination of the two is rather far from my well trodden reading cow path, so I doubt I will continue with the series.
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