A clever, engaging fantasy story in the vein of Naomi Novik and Katherine Arden. Protagonist Ekata finds herself unexpectedly elevated to the position of Grand Duke when her entire family is cursed, and has to attempt to consolidate power she never wanted in the face of threats from within her government, a rival who wants her either dead or married to him, and the competing interests of the mysterious kingdom that lives in the waters beneath her domain.

With a rich cast of characters, fascinating politics, and a charming romance, this is a thoroughly enjoyable read.

I’m rounding this one up to 4 stars.

This was a YA fantasy with a historical feel. It had some foundations in Russian royal history and I enjoyed that element and this was some brutal family right here. The dukedom were out to kill one another for power, and the protagonist Ekata, felt justifiably out of the running as an insignificant daughter about to travel away to university. A curse hit and she found herself in a new position.

“Long live Her Grace.” Impossible, impossible. I was a middle child of thirteen.

This read had some great strong points, it was definitely a feminist tale. The title of Duke was genderless, power could be held equally between men and women but there’s a but. In reality, Ekata was surrounded by men who made her feel like a fool, wielded their power over her and used their gender to quash her thoughts, words and ideas.

"All my life, these men had ignored me. It had never bothered me until now."

Those contrasts of what seemed to be equality and in acutality wasn’t, were frustrating for Ekata and the reader but this was the story, how Ekata navigated this. All this happened in the middle of a bride parade and Ekata chose her consort, a young woman. The romance and LGBTQ+ elements were a little weak but the protagonist was only 16 and so that did feel in the background somewhat. I would have liked this to have felt more developed, however.

I enjoyed the worlds of above and below and honestly, I read this over two days whenever I could; it had an unputdownable feel. There were elements to this story that felt unique, the magic was vague, unfathomable and mysterious, which I liked. Overall this was a good read and bonus, it was a standalone.

Thank you to Titan Books for the very pretty hardback review copy.

This political fantasy is utterly stunning. I was swept away into a world where an unprepared woman is thrust into power, with only her father's bad example to follow and the knowledge that everyone is using her.

Pretty much everyone is an antagonist, from the outright villain Sigis (who's awful), to the ministers who want power but it's hard to work out who is actively planning Ekata's death. It's so twisty, and I loved how awful the choices Ekata made were. Somehow, the fact that she was clearly making terrible choices (from bad options) didn't irritate me, but I was rooting for her to get what she wanted so she could turn her situation around. That I was eager for her to win despite everything shows really impressive characterisation as I don't have much patience for characters who make consistently awful choices from bad morals.

The world is so much fun - a city built of ice on a frozen lake with an ethereal water-living race below who control magic. The setting made me cold and I love the power balance between the two Duchies - Above and Below. This book just reinforces my belief that a political fantasy fails if the world isn't there to back it up, as so much relies on the resources and relationships between nations.

This book also involves a push from some factions for a parliament, which I really like to see in fantasy. We tend to default to monarchies and yes, I LOVE the politics that can come from absolute, dynastic rulership, but also there's a lot of politics that can grabbled with when a parliament is brought in. Given that people are trying to start a parliament, this is a book that focuses on autocracy politics, but the way this plot thread plays out makes me hope there will be more parliaments in books.

A tiny, eeny little complaint I has was the sheer length of the chapters. There's only something like 18 chapters in this book, which means they are rather long. There were quite a few scene breaks that felt like they should be chapter breaks. It's a personal preference for sure, but I find shorter chapters not only give me the space to put a book down so I can run and do chores, but also give me a momentary breather to digest what has just happened.

I was so excited to read this. Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for gifting me a copy of this book.
The writing style was good and I found it easy to read but I wasn’t really invested in the book. The plot took me ages to get into and I found the first half to drag a little. There is a lot of talking and conversation in this book which I found repetitive at times. I loved the world and I found it so interesting. The world is split in two witch was great and I really liked the worldbuilding. I also loved the diversity in this book as being queer isn’t questioned and there isn’t really any heteronormativity. I found the world more interesting than anything else in this book, There’s a magical plague in the book which was good but parts of the magic system were confusing at first. I thought the romance was okay, it’s sapphic which is wonderful but unfortunately I didn’t really care for the main character. Ekata is the main character who becomes the new duke because her whole family is under a curse which seemed convenient. Personally I thought she was dull and I just couldn’t care for her. The villain wasn’t interesting to me either. This is a a character driven novel so if the characters didn’t work for me then unfortunately the book didn’t.
There are several twists in the book and a couple I didn’t see coming but I wasn’t invested so it didn’t affect me much. Overall this is a good book, it just wasn’t for me.

I really enjoyed reading this book. I loved the world-building most of all; the world was complex yet very accessible to us as readers. We had enough information to work with.
The plot had great potential, though it didn't live up to it for me. There were too many political scenes, which made it a bit boring for me. I would have loved to see more of the main character in other scenes.
The writing style was great, and it was easy enough to breeze through.

All in all I ended up giving this one three stars.

In a way, I didn’t expect to love this book, so I suppose this rating isn’t hugely surprising. I have struggled with YA fantasies this year, although granted a lot because they were opening books in a series, so I went into this with my expectations appropriately lowered.

Before I get into just why this book didn’t work for me, I just want to note, there was nothing bad about it. It was a good, solid book. If you like YA fantasy, if you like sapphic YA fantasy, this will be perfect for you. Everything I have to say is stuff that didn’t work solely for me, and therefore made the book really only okay. So honestly, your best bet is to just scroll past this review and carry on with your day.

That being said, here’s why I didn’t get along with it.

It positions itself as a political mystery fantasy, so I thought, great, it’s gonna be good. Only. Only, it being YA, it doesn’t have nearly the depth and engrossingness of the politics that I was looking for. That’s not to say YA invariably doesn’t (The King of Attolia does this excellently, although I will admit it’s moot whether you can classify that YA, as does Descendant of the Crane), but I often find that there’s a shallowness to it that there isn’t in adult. And that’s fine in some cases! It wasn’t here, for me.

And because it didn’t have that depth, really the plot ended up feeling somewhat flimsy. The concept was so good, but the execution wasn’t there. At 72%, I stopped for a moment, and thought that actually I couldn’t recall anything of note that Ekata had done in the past 300 pages. She had done very little actual investigating, complained a fair bit, arrested some people on dubious hunches and not much else. And if I’m promised a “thrilling political mystery”, I actually want to be thrilled. Not cured of insomnia.

What would have worked better for me, I think, would be if Ekata had been forced to work together with her wife, to properly investigate what was going on, because she genuinely couldn’t trust anyone (rather than this “she can’t trust anyone” but actually she does and they’re pretty tame when it comes to potential betrayals). Because that would then satisfy the development of the plot and that of the romance (more of which in a second). As it was, I just felt like the plot carried Ekata along with it. And to rub salt in that wound, the ending showed just how good it could have been all along.

So back to the wife. There doesn’t feel nearly enough development of that potential romance for me to root for it. Inkar is the saving grace of the book, and I loved her, but I never felt like I needed her and Ekata to be together. This is what I mean when I say forcing them to work together would have developed that for me. Instead, it’s more like they’re co-existing, until, for no discernible reason, Inkar starts helping Ekata (but only barely).

The final point, which is probably the most personal of them all, is that I just don’t get along with fantasies which have some dickhead guy trying to overpower and/or take the throne off a woman because it’s somehow his right. I don’t know what it is. I think I just get so overwhelmed with rage at him that I can’t properly engage with the plot. All I want is for him to get fully and completely humiliated (which never happens exactly how I want anyway). As in. Right then and there.

But, despite all this, I would still recommend this book if you looked at it and thought, yeah I might enjoy that. Everything I’ve said here applies primarily to me, so don’t let this review put you off this book. Especially since you’ll likely enjoy it more than me.