Yawn.Īnd, a detail that continuously bugged me: Why does Mary S–, oops, I mean Ildiko, have an ordinary human female name while everyone else has a made-from-scratch fantasy-novel name? Making it worse, after moving to a different linguistic community she acquires the title hercegesé. At the beginning they’re two perfect people who like each other at the end they’re two perfect people who love each other. (Have they no faults? Does she at least pick her nose?) I meant the relationship itself. When I said Mary Sue, I didn’t mean the character herself, although she is one–as is he. What I saw was 90% Mary Sue, 5% each of two unrelated plots that should have taken much more of the storyline, allowing the budding romance to happen bit by bit in between times. Hope you can make going to join you in lone-voice-in-the-wilderness-land. Update: The chat will occur on June 28 at 8pm EDT. I hope you enjoy Radiance – I can’t wait to hear what you think! I’ll be posting the Book Club Chat time as soon as I have it, too, so stay tuned for that. It’s also available at Overdrive, so it may be accessible through your local library. You can find Radiance at most vendors ( A | BN | K | AB | Scribd ). Two people brought together by the trappings of duty and politics will discover they are destined for each other, even as the powers of a hostile kingdom scheme to tear them apart. Bound to her new husband, Ildiko will leave behind all she’s known to embrace a man shrouded in darkness but with a soul forged by light. Resigned to her fate, she is horrified to learn that her intended groom isn’t just a foreign aristocrat but the younger prince of a people neither familiar nor human. Ildiko, niece of the Gauri king, has always known her only worth to the royal family lay in a strategic marriage.

Always a dutiful son, Brishen agrees to the marriage and discovers his bride is as ugly as he expected and more beautiful than he could have imagined.

A trade and political alliance between the human kingdom of Gaur and the Kai kingdom of Bast-Haradis requires that he marry a Gauri woman to seal the treaty. Here’s the cover copy:īrishen Khaskem, prince of the Kai, has lived content as the nonessential spare heir to a throne secured many times over. For me, it was an ideal blend of fantasy and romance, with a friends-to-lovers plot between two characters I really, really liked. A | BN | K | AB If you haven’t read this book before, I hope you’ll give it a try.

Radiance book grace draven