Author: Sweet Absynthium

Genre: Fantasy/LGBTQ+/romance

What I liked about this book:

Your descriptions are *gorgeous*. I really could feel and see where I was reading about, and it was easy to absorb myself in this party and Helianthus' thoughts post this battle. And he is a compelling character I'd like to know more about. He loves his family, loves his homeland, and generally seems like a good guy. 

I also really like this angle of a newly finished war.

And it's gay, which I appreciate.

What I did NOT like about this book:

The pacing is a little bit too slow for me. It took awhile for me to get into what exactly the plot was, and perhaps it's that I'm kind of tired and still trying to stop procrastinating on doing these, but I sort of lost interest.

Part of this might be that while your descriptions are, as I said, gorgeous, there are just too many of them. I'd like to see some more drama in these opening chapters. I see there was a war. How has it affected everyone? Are they trying to pick up the pieces? Show me that. Get me invested. Make me care about these characters, because they're SO easy to care about. There's too much going into the description of this town and what his sister looks like and not enough action for me.

I think too if this is going to be a romance novel, we need to introduce the love interest sooner. We have a sort of non-consequential sex scene in chapter 3 that helped to add to the characterization, but I'd like to see something that screams THIS IS THE LOVE INTEREST a little sooner if that's the genre we're going for.

Basically I feel like, as I often do, I just need to be a little more grounded.

Overall:

Eh. I like it, but I'd be really interested in reading a second draft of this because it reminds me of initial drafts of work I later LOVED.

Rating:

5/10. It could use a rewrite to tighten things up but you have a solid premise here.