The Veiled Kingdom – Holly Renee
Information
- Goodreads: 4.00 out of 13,053 Ratings
- Genre: Fantasy Romance
- Series: The Veiled Kingdom
- Age Category: New Adult
Summary
Nyra’s dad is a bitch. He’s the king and he does not make life easy for his family or the ones within his kingdom. He makes them participate in a thing called the tithe – which where everyone has to give him a certain amount of their power. This is unfortunate for Nyra (Whose name is not Nyra) because, even though she is his daughter, she knows that he just kind of kills everyone who doesn’t give him anything. And she doesn’t have any power to give. So, she tries to escape, using the tattoo of the rebellion to assist her through it (I could be misremembering why, but I don’t think it’s fully explained and might also be a plot device to get the two characters together, but that’s none of my business because it worked). Her escape does not go well – she ends up in the dungeons, then being rescued by the actual rebellion – Dacre, the commander’s son, is the one doing the rescue. And they immediately do not like one another. She’s a traitor, he’s a traitor, they both have attitude problems, he thinks she’s weak, she thinks he’s mean as shit. It’s a good time.
Review
Listen, I’m not going to sit here and say that everything about this book is a masterpiece. I was told our girl would be combat training and we see little to none of that. There aren’t great action scenes – there’s actually only 2 larger ones that I can think of off the top of my head. The beginning, where Dacre and Kai go into the Dungeon to rescue Wren and end up rescuing Nyra as well. And then there’s the scene where a man from the palace tries to kill her and Wren, resulting in Wren and Dacre’s father strangling Nyra. She’s meant to be training for combat to serve Dacre’s revolution, but all the training scenes last 2 sentences and end in smut. This just isn’t a book you come to for the action – you come here for the characters and the smut.
The world of this book is interesting. There are fae, but it took me around half the book to realize that’s what they are. They don’t have the pointed ears or supernatural beauty. They just have magic and an underground kingdom. Which I thought was cool and well done. It was more of a ‘yes, this is what we are’ rather than a full on in your face thing. The magic is interesting, but we don’t know much about it because our main character doesn’t know much about it. We do know that Kai is a shadow daddy and Dacre has the elemental magic of fire. Is all Fae magic elemental? We don’t know, it isn’t really explained. But the kingdom’s subjects are forced to give the king some of their magic. I also liked that Nyra isn’t human – at least I’m assuming she’s not as this moment. She isn’t a lost human who finds herself in the Fae world; she’s actively already a part of it while still having that concept of ‘odd girl out’ finding herself in a place that’s vastly different from what she knows. There are tropes and I love them.
Are the characters fantastic? No. Are they living rent free in my noggin? Absolutely. Dacre pisses me off and Nyra gets on my nerves. There aren’t really in-depth character analysis’ or development. Dacre is still who he is at the beginning and neither of them really feel like a full/real person just yet. But seeing them together just quite simply hits, okay? I love the dynamic of two people who don’t trust and kind of really hate one another also being attracted to one another and slowly falling for one another over time, despite everything in their brains telling them not too. And, folks, is what we have here. We have the same bed trope, the ‘Who Did This To You’, the Best Friend’s Brother, the enemies to lovers, the borderline abusive smut that’s only really hot when there’s either after-care or you’re only reading it in the book. Holly Renee can, indeed, write smut. And that’s what this book is. It’s a fun story full of fantasy with two people who hate one another engaging in fun adult activities. It’s a ‘no thoughts, head empty’ I just want to read about two people who hate each other banging. And I ate that shit up. I then forced a few of my friends to read it so that they could suffer through waiting for the next book right along with me.