Smoke and Scar by Gretchen Powell Fox
“He frowned at the specificity of the image that came into his mind.” Same, sis. My immediate thought was “already? We’re already smitten after one look and 5 words total exchanged?” I have no room to judge, though. I was absolutely enamored with my husband after one smile and married that man the second he gave me the chance.
Okay, no. We ride at dawn for Zephyr. These lil bitch ass humans want to hurl slurs at someone so kind? So thoughtful? I’m ready to throw down. (This take aged poorly…)
I do love a self aware man, and man, is Cedric self aware. I love that Elyria didn’t need to chew him out for him to understand his decisions had been lacking when it came to how he was unintentionally aligning himself and the perception it gave. He was already almost there, and would have gotten there whether Elyria stepped up to him or not. I love that. Too often, these MMCs are morally dark grey because they don’t ever do any type of introspection. Cedric is definitely morally light grey because he understands that his actions affect the people around him and is willing to do the work internally to be better. That’s such an important trait in a person but less so in a fictional character, which makes it incredibly rare. I think Cedric might be a man of his own outside the tropes of fantasy and romantic fantasy as a whole. Love that for him, love him for that.
Geez, poor Cedric just can’t catch a break. A fae gets hurt and Elyria rips into him even though it’s not his fault. A human gets hurt and Belian rips into him even though it’s not his fault.
I’m a little confused about the magic system. I understand the tokens/mana thing for the most part. Humans don’t inherently have magic so what magic they harvest from the land to charge their mana tokens is finite. The fae seem to have a magic source inside themselves that manifests as a specific element. From what I’ve seen, though, they specialize. They have access to one specific type of elemental magic, yet our main character has 2? And it’s not like she has her earth magic and then a bonus charge up in the shadows. Shadow magic seems to be a separate type of elemental magic (I.e. the nocterrian has shadow magic and it doesn’t seem peculiar to anyone.) So why does our FMC have 2 types of elemental magic when it seems that’s not just uncommon but incredibly rare? More world building would have been nice.
Can Cyren shut the fuck up and stop jinxing the group holy hell. (… Not like that, though…)
Gael… By god, Gael. We love a powerful woman, and her sacrifice was for sure the ultimate display of power. “A one-winged angel come straight from the fourth quarter of hell.”
Immediate extra star for that plot twist. I knew he had to have magic because of the authors hints throughout, but holy shit, I didn’t call that.
Ouch… I didn’t know how to feel about our second plot twist at first because it felt so out of left field, but some of the context can be found if you look closely enough at previous chapters. However, it still hurt for Elyria to suffer like that. She didn’t deserve for that burden to fall on her.
Will we see consequences for Elyria’s actions with the crown shard? I’m genuinely curious. This author has all the makings of a ruthless heartbreaker and she’s one hell of a storyteller. She plays with foreshadowing well, so I’m excited to see how she handles the plot armor for her main characters with the sacrifice element that she’s pushed so hard here at the end.
The foreshadowing was there for Zephyr, so while I’m disappointed to be proven right, I’m not surprised.
I want to see some bloody revenge on Raefe in book 2. I am beyond less than pleased he got away with how badly he hurt Elyria.
My final thoughts? I enjoyed reading this despite not being fully enraptured by it. It didn’t suck me in and make me forget I have responsibilities, my rush finish was definitely because I have an ARC to read that I’m looking forward to getting to. But I had fun, and that’s half the point for me.