Review by Booklist Review
Broadbent's latest novel to be re-released by Tor Bramble is a stand-alone set in the Crowns of Nyaxia world, and falls between the action of The Ashes & the Star Cursed King (2024) and The Songbird & the Heart of Stone (2024). Sylina is a sister in the Arachessen, assassins trained in the magics of many gods who were blinded for their art of death and given the hearing of the thread of life instead. Her latest mission is to infiltrate a band of Obitraens (vampires from Obitraes, where the heretic goddess Nyaxia rules) and kill the vampire conqueror Atrius. Sylina convinces the vampire conqueror Erekkus that she is a competent Seer by telling him of the prophecy pertaining to winning a battle with Atrius by his side. She also sees a young Atrius without his horns, a vision that shakes her to her core and forces her to reconsider all she knows about him. This is a dark romantasy, as Sylina and Atrius go from enemies to lovers, and Broadbent's myriad fans will be thrilled to revisit the world of the Crowns of Nyaxia series again.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
For this pulse-pounding standalone set in the same universe as the Crowns of Nyaxia series, Broadbent expands her vampire political drama into a mystical corner of the human world. After the devastation of the land of Glaea by the brutal Pythora King during Sylina's childhood, she pledged her life and sacrificed her eye to the Arachessen, a celibate, all-female order of mystical seer-assassins in service of the goddess of fate. When the vampire Atrius, cursed by the goddess Nyaxia and exiled by the House of Blood, arrives to conquer Glaea, Sylina is tasked with infiltrating his army, gaining his trust, and killing him. But as she grows close to Atrius and learns his troubled history, her compassion for him grows, while her willingness to do anything her goddess commands--and to avoid sex--wanes. Broadbent does a good job depicting Syrina's magical alternative sight, and her disorientation when it is sometimes blocked, as well as keeping the vampire captain romantically mysterious. Fans of the setting will find plenty of the politics, battles, shifting loyalties, and high intensity enemies-turned-lovers chemistry they've come to expect, though with fewer vampires and a bit more of a populist bent. It's another winner from Broadbent. (Mar.)
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