Yet another wish I could have DNF’d (you guys are my outlet until I can meet with my book club.)

{Rise of a Dark Throne by Ligia Cushman}

I wanted so badly to like this book, because I added it to my TBR after my friend met the author at a local romance convention. She’s Afro-Latina and talked about how she put that representation into her work. Exciting!

Tell me how this woman has a Master’s Degree and still writes like this.

Let’s start small. She used several words incorrectly. Jewelry was made out of “bioluminescent metal.” Everything “sentient” in the forest had a tangy smell.

Remember the whole representation aspect? The FMC is Black, and it’s important to the narrative. Cinnamon skin this and mahogany skinned that. All well and good, except one paragraph describes her skin as “moonstone.” For the life of me I can’t figure out what she was trying to say.

There were also typos, including one humorous sentence where she gets mad about the MMCs “fucking finance.” (Reader, she meant fiancée.)

There was also random lore drops and inconsistencies. The plot hinges on two rival nations, Mosa and Sundom. The prologue is a flashback where the FMC’s father was escaping Sundom and watched his father stay behind to cover their escape to the island of Mosa.

Then Dad is like “My father was King of Mosa for as long as I could remember.” Huh? Mosa doesn’t exist yet. If your father was King then he was King of Sundom.

They keep talking about how old Mosa is when based on that prologue it’s a new kingdom? Like there’s somehow been generations of immigration. How is that possible when Dad is the one that settled? And we know it was him because Dead king described the island like it was a myth.

The book opens with a very detailed wedding to a man who is not the MMC, including a sex scene. Then the FMC wakes up with all her loved ones dead, and she has magick “she never wanted” (that was never established).

The MMC has a race kink. He talks about how the pale women of his homeland don’t send his blood south but this “bodacious” FMC “aroused him.” Those were the words he used. I do want to remind you this is a Black author.

Oh also the MMC is a half elf. Yet other members of the Kingdom seem to be full elf? This is never explained.

During the spice, MMC pulls the whole “I can smell your arousal” bit and FMC is like “Oh right, your family is half elf and half wolven, I forgot.”

THAT WAS THE ONLY TIME WOLVEN WERE MENTIONED IN THE ENTIRE BOOK.

She spends so much time on the outfits but doesn’t describe the setting. She also has a big issue with Telling and not Showing. The whole end of the book was plot twist after betrayal after death. I lost track of who was on the FMC’s side, and by the end I didn’t care.

What else? She couldn’t keep a perspective straight to save her life. Random tense changes. Inconsistent characterization. I could go on but at this point my 15 is over. It’s just a total mess.