Book Review: "The Starlight Heir"

Amalie Howard's first voyage into romantasy is a steamy and magical adventure that's sure to satisfy fans of romance and fantasy alike.

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Warning: Spoilers for the book follow.

Given my love of romantasy–as both a writer and reader of this particular subgenre of fantasy–it probably comes as no surprise to anyone that I ended up joining a local book club devoted to it. There’s just something intoxicating and energizing about sharing your love of blended fantasy and romance with other people, you know what I mean?

For our first reading we read Amalie Howard’s The Starlight Heir, the first romantasy from Amalie Howard (best-known for her many other romance novels). It’s a fun little book, skilfully blending together various mythologies and fantasy conceits, with a very steamy romance between a female chosen one and a rakish bastard prince. There are shades here of many of the other big romantasies–most notably Leigh Bardugo’s Shadow and Bone–but there’s also more than enough originality here to hook any romantasy fan.

When we first meet Suraya Saab she seems to be just another blacksmith. However, the arrival of a letter from the king changes her entire destiny and, upon arriving at the palace, she soon finds that the crown prince and his scheming mother are desperately seeking a being with tremendous power. At the same time, she also finds herself face-to-face with the king’s bastard son Roshan, and it’s not long before the two are not only forging a relationship but also evading both the prince’s brother and his stepmother, both of whom will stop at nothing to use Suraya for their own purposes.

There were many things that I quite enjoyed about this novel. The use of present tense gave the prose an immediacy that immediately swept us into this world, keeping us riveted on Suraya as she learns to navigate both her strange (and often overwhelming) new powers as well as a romance that is just as strange and overwhelming. At the same time, it can sometimes get a bit stifling to spend so much time with one character in the perpetual present, even one as charming and charismatic as Suraya. There were many times throughout the book–and my book club agreed with me on this–that it would have been nice to get some of Roshan’s point of view. While I don’t necessarily dislike single POV novels, I do think that romance and romantasy are at their best when we get to spend time inside the heads of both of our romantic leads.

One of the biggest critiques that often faces romantasy–particularly first-time romantasy authors like Howard, who’s best-known for her romances–is that many books tend to foreground the romance while forcing the fantasy into the backseat. I found that The Starlight Heir largely avoided this trap, because it does have a fully-fledged magical system, and it’s clear that using her magic takes a tremendous toll on Suraya, particularly when she ends up taking the lives of others. There are also gods and ancient prophecies at work, and while some of these are a bit hazy, Howard nevertheless does a good job of showing how power works in this world. The rest of the more ambiguous bits can presumably be ironed out in the sequels.

This isn’t to say that the romance is pushed into the background, because that is definitely not the case. In fact, we sort of know from the moment they meet that there’s something special between Roshan and Suraya, something that neither of them can fight and that comes to take over their lives as they flee from the palace and into the wilderness. This being romance, however, there are more than a few obstacles in the way of their happily-ever-after, not the least of which is the fact that Roshan has some secrets of his own. When these come to light they cause Suraya to rethink everything that she thought she knew about this man that she has come to love, and it takes a lot of soul-searching for her to decide that they really do belong together.

As one might glean from the blurbs on the cover, there’s more than a bit of “spice” in this book, and though I am not generally drawn to straight sex scenes (give me gay sex any day of the week), I nevertheless found these quite powerful and potent. The moments when Suraya and Roshan finally have sex are potent not just because they are titillating–though they are–but also because they mark those moments at which both of them actually feel like they can be open and honest with one another, sharing the deepest intimacy that two bodies can.

Pacing wise I do feel The Starlight Heir was a bit rushed. I would have liked to have been able to spend some more time with these characters, and I think that the ending could have used a little slowing down. For that matter, I very much would have liked to see more of Queen Morvarid, the sinister big bad who is truly horrible and ruthless and ends up being responsible for the most devastating death in the entire book. Lastly (and this is a minor quibble), I did find the book’s abrupt uses of contemporary slang quite jarring, particularly in the earlier parts of the book. It’s not that every fantasy book has to have characters speaking in an archaic dialect of English, but is rather jarring to be in the middle of a fantasy universe where people randomly break into contemporary teen slang.

The Starlight Heir works quite well as a standalone, though there are of course hints that there’s more lurking under the surface than we’ve seen so far. Among other things, there are suggestions that Roshan may have somehow been possessed by the death god Fero, at least if the faint redness that gleams in his eyes is anything to go by. There is also another mysterious god who only appears in brief interludes and who might have a bond with Suraya that’s even stronger than of Roshan. Given that these little interludes aren’t as fully-developed or as coherent as the other parts of the book, I’m looking forward to seeing these plots given further development.

All in all, The Starlight Heir is a really entertaining piece of romantasy storytelling, and I can’t see what Howard has for us next!