Phoenix King

I wanted to LOVE The Phoenix King as I love a book about a woman's rage and who doesn't love a slow-burn romance with the enemy assassin turned bodyguard. Yet I never felt immersed in the world since much of the technology and creatures specific to the world were never described enough to get an impression. There were some lovely descriptions of the desert and the dunes but rarely descriptions of anything else. (There is a glossary in the back of the book that helps with this a bit but sending readers to a glossary for any new detail of your world is not great worldbuilding.)

While King Leo is supposed to be written as though it is a question of if he is losing his mind, we still do not get enough reasoning behind his motives for what he does throughout the book. As a POV character there's no excuse for not showing more of that struggle. Similarly with Princess Elena, she is supposed to be the good and just queen-to-be and yet she is frequently so focused on the country and the power of fire as her birthright that we lose that. This time it is because we are balanced on the edge of being just and doing what must be done which is a theme throughout the book, but I never buy into it because it is never written in a way that makes me feel that the painful choice is actually the only choice. The lack of discussing options and decent, logical planning by both Leo and Elena is honestly stupid. And then Yassen has a mid-plot twist with absolutely no foreshadowing even though he is a POV character.

I felt that each character had specific plot beats their actions had to hit and while we hit them we didn't explore their motives as fully as we should've and instead are left with some holes in the characterizations and the plot. These aren't so bad that the story as a whole cannot be enjoyed, but it is enough to disappoint me.