The Queen of Ieflaria: Tales of Inthya, Book 1

This was a great story involving dragons and princesses. I hope the story continues. I would love to know what happens in the relationship.

3.5 starsThis book lost half a star for an unfortunate first chapter, but retained the high end of 3.5 because it was a standalone, despite being in a series. I'm not kidding, it was a seriously bad first chapter with confusing names being dropped every five seconds and explanations of who everyone was in a very infodumping manner. To make things worse, some names being dropped were pretty similar, and one place seemed to have multiple names for it, so that I had to go back and check information a couple of times. A bad first chapter might not have held as much weight if the chapters weren't each so long. If this had had a (once-)standard 10% sample and I had previewed it instead of buying sight-unseen, I probably wouldn't have continued. The first chapter goes to 14%.Luckily, as soon as we switched to Adale's POV in chapter two, information was dropped more naturally. Where Esofi's friends were each described in detail as they were introduced, we were left to infer the history of Adale's friends based on their interactions, and it worked so much better. Adale also had a more personable POV, endearing me to her as soon as we got to her POV (whereas in Esofi's first chapter I didn't feel a connection to either girl).A lovely aspect of this book is that there was no heteronormativity at all in this world. Even when talking about whether an heir is needed, the magic of the world allowed for a temporary sex change to allow for a f/f pairing to have a child (m/m still needed a surrogate, though; sorry, guys); it's also mentioned that the sex change could be permanent if that was where the person's gender belonged. There was also a neutral gender in this world. Neither the magical sex change nor the neutral gender affected our main characters in this book, but it was nice to see it included. I wasn't sure at first if Esofi was asexual, and I was hoping she was, but I think she just hadn't allowed herself to considering anybody romantically, since she had been betrothed from the age of 3.I liked the gradual nature of the girls' romance in the book. Their initial relationship comes from a place of duty for both of them (one reluctantly so), and there are hints of "I hope we can develop a relationship" "Wait, I might actually want to court her" before anything resembling love blossoms. My last read was pure instalove, and it was nice to see this one go with a slower burn.I also enjoyed that the characters proved competent in their own ways. Esofi, who comes in all pretty pretty princessy (and overweight!), is competent in battle and diplomacy from the beginning. Adale has further to go to get to a point where she has confidence in herself, but she proves herself competent in picking up clues (thank you for not dragging them out so we figure them out long before the characters do) and researching. I was hoping there was more to some of Adale's contributions, but nothing was ever explained about them, and I get the feeling that this book ends Esofi and Adale's story.Speaking of which, I really love the pacing of this book and that it had its own conclusion on every account. The author has left the world open to more stories, but this story feels so satisfactorily finished.So, if you can get past the first chapter, the rest of the book is really good :)Recommended for fans of: F/F relationships; characters all over the LGBTQIA spectrum; dragons; standalone stories in bigger worlds; slower burn relationships; names beginning with A, E, I, or L; apology kittens

I had a lot of fun with this book. The world-building is rich and detailed, the mythology satisfying, and the romance enjoyable, with lots of twists and turns. Adale is particularly sympathetic as the second child who is suddenly thrust into a world of duties and responsibilities she never sought or wanted, and for which she feels horribly unprepared. Her slow realization of her love for Esofi, the foreign princess who has suddenly become her presumed bride, is the most important and satisfying emotional throughline of the book, and it comes through believably.Esofi, as a character, is more uneven. She is complex and layered, with a core of iron determination under what seems like a soft, fluffy and innocent exterior. But it sometimes feels like the parts of her character don't all quite gel, as if she is the result of several different drafts of the character that the author was having difficulty reconciling. She comes off as wise in some ways and foolish in others, and some of her decisions seem hard to reconcile with a person who has been trained her whole life in diplomacy and politics. I liked her, but I didn't always believe her, as a character. This is in contrast to Adale, who always feels like a whole person.The dialogue is stilted at times -- a common problem in the epic fantasy genre -- and there is a lot of info-dumping, especially in the first chapter. One gets the impression that this vivid world has been living in the author's head for decades, and she was in a rush to get it all in front of the audience. It's a tough thing to balance in this kind of book, where the world is so different from our own, and I'm sympathetic to how challenging it must have been. In any case, the story picks up a great deal once we start seeing it from Adale's point of view.The romance is a lot tamer than I expected; the characters don't get up to much more than some kissing and hand-holding. Still, it's sweet and enjoyable, and it kept me reading to find out how things turned out. The fantasy side of the plot, which deals with repeated dragon attacks on the kingdom, has a very satisfying conclusion, and takes up much of the last third of the book. There are also some cameos by a goddess whom I really would like to see more of; I appreciate fantasy authors who let their deities be actual characters with their own feelings and objectives, and I think Calvin handles it well here.Overall, this is a fascinating world, and I look forward to seeing more from Calvin in the future.

I am actively in search of more LGBT+ fantasy, particularly LGBT+ fantasy featuring queer women, so when I came across a novella that promised an arranged marriage between two princesses I snapped up a copy immediately.Unfortunately I didn’t love this one as much as I hoped I would, which you can probably tell from my rating, but it’s not an awful story by any means either.Princess Esofi of Rhodia has been prepared for marriage all her life. Since she was three years old she has been betrothed to the Crown Prince of Ieflaria, Albion, with the hope that their alliance will bring safety to Ieflaria with the help of the mages Esofi will bring with her.When Albion dies unexpectedly, Esofi agrees to marry his sister Adale, now the Crown Princess, but Adale has no desire to be queen and Esofi’s future happiness relies on her ascending to the role she has been prepared for since her infancy.There’s a lot to like about this novella. First and foremost, I adored finally coming across a fantasy world with completely different attitudes to gender. There are men, women and non-binary people in this world and no one thinks anything of it, nor does anyone think it unusual that two women or two men might marry, even in a political match. Women are able to go through ‘the change’, which is never fully explained in this story but, from what I gathered, seems to be a process in which a priestess can potentially change the biology of a woman so that she and her wife can create an heir. Not all women can do it, however, while men can’t do it at all and must rely on surrogates.Even if neither Esofi or Adale can go through ‘the change’, however, it’s still not a huge problem. Most royal families have many siblings and cousins which would make it possible for a same-sex couple to choose a successor from a favoured family member, and I loved how normalised same-sex relationships and gender neutrality were in this novella.Calvin has also created a fascinating pantheon of gods, and it was so interesting to see the clash of cultures between these two princesses with Esofi hailing from a country that relies heavily on religion and magic while Adale hails from a country that encourages science and medicine and the princess herself appears to have no religious belief at all. I actually would have liked to see a lot more about the clash between religion and science in this fantasy world, a world in which gods, magic and science all exist together, and I think that was my main problem with the novella as a whole. I wanted more.I saw another reviewer on Goodreads sum up my own thoughts on this perfectly when they said this novella reads like a film adaptation of a longer and better novel. I couldn’t agree more. It feels like there are scenes missing that would flesh out the story and its characters and that’s a real shame from a world that has so much potential.The romance between Esofi and Adale developed a little too quickly for my tastes. I loved that even though they had never met, Esofi knew Albion fairly well because the two of them had been writing letters to each other since their childhood knowing that they would one day be married. While Esofi wasn’t in love with Albion by any means, the two of them had essentially been pen pals and even if Esofi couldn’t expect passionate love from her marriage, which wasn’t something she was looking for anyway, she at least knew that she and her husband could be friends.Esofi and Adale, however, seemed to go from not knowing one another to suddenly trying to impress each other very quickly. Fair enough this story is a novella and things do move faster in a novella, but the speed of this relationship meant it didn’t feel as organic as it could have with two women mourning someone they both cared for in different ways. Adale not only loved her brother, she feels a lot of guilt surrounding his death and feels completely unprepared to fill his shoes. When she discovers Esofi has letters with her that Albion sent to her, it was a wonderful moment for them to bond, which they did, but bonded so quickly that they had their first kiss and Adale was too busy thinking about how pretty she thought Esofi was to go into any detail about how the letters written by her brother made her feel. In fact we didn’t even get to see any of the letters either Esofi or Albion had written to each other, and considering the hints of an unhappy childhood we get from Esofi in this story those letters would have been a wonderful peek into her life up until the point that we met her.Adale was sad, then she started falling in love with Esofi and the character work here wasn’t quite developed enough for Adale to feel more than one emotion at once. I would have found their relationship far more interesting if Adale had perhaps also began to feel guilty for not only (as she feels) playing a part in her brother’s death, but also in filling his shoes in every area of his life from the role he was going to take on to the woman he was going to marry.Some of the language used in the story bugged me a little, too. Every now and then one of the characters would use a word like ‘dumb’ which pulled me out of this fantasy world and made me feel as though I was reading about a high school drama. There were also instances where other characters spoke to the two princesses in a way that wasn’t believable; one of Esofi’s ladies-in-waiting, in particular, was constantly complaining and putting Esofi down at every opportunity she got. I don’t doubt for a second that it’s possible for a member of a royal family to feel as self-conscious as anyone else, perhaps even more so because they’re in the public eye, but I found it hard to believe that someone who had been trained her whole life to be a future queen would let someone get away with talking to her like that all the time.I think I’m being particularly harsh in this review and I don’t mean to be because, as I mentioned above, there are parts of this novella I really liked – the world-building, in particular, I thought was superbly done for a novella – but I think because the story was a shorter story the character work had to suffer so that there was enough room for the world-building, and that’s so frustrating in a story with an f/f romance at its centre. If this were a fully-fledged novel, with more room for all of Calvin’s ideas, I would have liked it a lot more.I think there are some more books set in this world, I believe there’s at least one more novella, and I’m interested in checking them out at some point because I think Calvin is a fantasy writer with a lot of potential and I’m hopeful that she’ll continue to write f/f fantasy that will get better and better with each book.

This fantasy/royal romance genre is small but my absolute favourite. Thoroughly reccommend this book to anyone who enjoyed Breaking Legacies, Sword of the Guardian or Of Fire and Stars.Most of the story focuses on Princess Esofia and her new suitors, Princess Adale and her two horrid cousins. You can guess who she picks. Dragons are also a threat throughout but they only have a very short run in towards the end. I didn't care as I was mostly reading for the romance, which was very chaste and sweet.It seemed very short, only lasted me two evenings reading which was a shame because I really enjoyed being immersed in Ieflaria.

Although it took me a little time to become fully immersed into the story, I'm glad I continued. The characters are easily lovable and the plot developed in so many ways I could not have predicted, making for great surprises and an enthralling journey. The romance was lovely, a slow burn of sorts, and beautifully developed throughout. The ending left me with such a warm feeling, and I'm excited for the sequels to come! My advice to anyone thinking of reading; give it a try and stick with it. You will not be disappointed!

Love story between reluctant heir to the throne Adale and her brothers intended Esofi. I enjoyed both characters as they evolved from a hedonistic rebel and over zealous magic hurling dragon slayer to a compatible couple. I really enjoyed the revelation that it is the 'little fat rosebud' that does the dragon slaying, whilst the hyperactive hunting hoyden develops into an academically gifted and emotional lover. I also think the last sentence of the book is a gold plated classic. Enjoy!

So the thing is, I love fantasy, but I struggle with it. I don't like getting into any new series, because I don't know how to be moderate, and have this compulsion to learn absolutely every piece of lore, which it makes it kinda hard to enjoy the story.Usually, I only start really enjoying a series with the second installment, (or when I reread the first) because my obsession with learning the world can take a backseat.This was the perfect fantasy for me though. It had no big info dumping, but it still had a rich world and plenty of interesting lore. I was able to actually keep up with the information it was feeding me, and still focus on the story!And the story, dang! I loved it!The characters were so charming, and even the ones with very little time were so fleshed outI loved the two leads, they were both slight trainwrecks, but they tried so hard and wanted to be so good, they were really endearing.The background characters were wonderful, I still remember all of them, a month after finishing it (again that's unusual for me with fantasy)It was paced really well, and it didn't ever dragHonestly I'm still shocked at how much I enjoyed this, I almost never have this experience with fantasy.I'll definitely keep following the series, and read anything else the author writes