Ruinsong

320 pages

English language

Published Dec. 4, 2020 by Farrar, Straus & Giroux.

ISBN:
978-0-374-31336-4
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3 stars (3 reviews)

In Julia Ember's dark and lush LGBTQ+ romantic fantasy Ruinsong, two young women from rival factions must work together to reunite their country, as they wrestle with their feelings for each other.

Her voice was her prison… Now it’s her weapon.

In a world where magic is sung, a powerful mage named Cadence has been forced to torture her country's disgraced nobility at her ruthless queen's bidding.

But when she is reunited with her childhood friend, a noblewoman with ties to the underground rebellion, she must finally make a choice: Take a stand to free their country from oppression, or follow in the queen’s footsteps and become a monster herself.

4 editions

Review of 'Ruinsong' on 'Storygraph'

4 stars

RUINSONG is a slow burn sapphic tale of falling in love under brutality, and daring to hope for a better future even after being groomed into complicity. The opening chapters are brutal, slowly but inexorably describing a reign of death and torture in which a powerful queen demands complicity and service in exchange for life. The plot is at least 90% slowly inching towards maybe doing something concrete about it while an ever escalating series of discomforts befall the main characters, then the ending is very dramatic and sudden. I refer it to a series of discomforts because the worst stuff happens around Cadence rather than to her (very early on bad things happen to Remi and then keep happening). There's a sense (usually backed up by dramatic asides and tales of woe) that much worse things are constantly happening somewhere to somebody, but since they aren't literally happening to …

Queer Fantasy: Just what the Doctor Ordered!

4 stars

If you needed some queer fantasy, have some queer fantasy by reading this.

It takes you into a really interesting world, where a revolution occurred some years back, and now the nobility are openly-reviled by the ruler.

There's also a song-magician class of people who are more open to the changing norms. Poly-relationships are referred to, most characters in this book are under the queer umbrella (which is why I don't mind that the villain is queer, because there is so much representation).

There was so much world-building that I'm really hoping for more in this world.

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rated it

1 star