A.J. Lancaster - The Lord of Stariel

The Lord of Stariel is dead. Long live the Lord of Stariel. Whoever that is.Everyone knows who the magical estate will choose for its next ruler. Or do they?Will it be the lord’s eldest son, who he despised?His favourite nephew, with the strongest magical land-sense?His scandalous daughter, who ran away from home years ago to study illusion?Hetta knows it won’t be her, and she’s glad of it. Returning home for her father’s funeral, all Hetta has to do is survive the family drama and avoid entanglements with irritatingly attractive local men until the Choosing. Then she can leave.But whoever Stariel chooses will have bigger problems than eccentric relatives to deal with. Winged, beautifully deadly problems. For the first time in centuries, the fae are returning to the Mortal Realm, and only the Lord of Stariel can keep the estate safe.

Comment: I've decided to read this book after becoming aware of the fifth in the series, which features a m/m couple. That book had been recommended to me somewhere, and while checking it out, I've realized it was part of a series. Since this first book also caught my attention, I've thought I might as well read in order. Well, this book wasn't bad but now I think I should have stuck to my initial intention.

In this fantasy series, we meet heroine Hetta as she is traveling back to her home estate after the death of her father. Since he is now gone, the magic in the Stariel land requires the choosing of a new lord and all members bust be present for the ceremony as it involves every member touching a stone so that one is chosen. Everyone feels there are only two possible choices, Marius who is Hetta's older brother, or Jack their oldest male cousin, simply because traditionally that's how things have been done. Everyone is surprised, Hetta included, when she is the one the stone chooses. However, while dealing with the following chaos is quite a task, so is the fact fae exist for real and apparently they are coming to take over Stariel land...

I was quite taken by this story from the start, even though having Hetta as narrator is, as always, a little limited in the amount of knowledge we can infer. Of course Hetta didn't share every single right away for obvious reasons, but as the pages kept being turned, I started to wonder about the author's writing style because I had the feeling perhaps things were going a bit too much in the opposite direction, which is to say, instead of oversharing, Hetta was not sharing enough and it felt as if the reader should already be aware of established information.

I've kept reading because this could be just an impression, added with the hints regarding secondary characters who, through Hetta's POV, seemed to be made to look mysterious or hiding something sometimes. I was also a bit confused with one thing, which is the notion that her family disliked Hetta, well most of them, for her magical ability to create illusions but if the land itself has this magical aura or whatever it's meant to be... why were the others against her for something that seemed to exist naturally in this world?

As things moved on, it started to become obvious there was some kind of secret agenda going on, because Hetta and those closer to her discover the stone had been a fake, and perhaps Hetta isn't really the chosen. The plot then diverged into two main issues, the investigation of what might have been done with the stone and the secrecy involving Wyn, their butler, and the sudden appearance of lady Gwen, a mysterious young woman who was found by a family member at the land's border without much about her. I mean... of course these two things had to be related and there were times where the author definitely wrote things in such a way that it was obvious what was being hidden... so, when the truth is revealed, I wasn't surprised.

There is some suggestion of romance between Hetta and Wyn, and some of the reveals made this seem more likely than not, but the plot also included red herrings about another character, and the story never went into intimate scenes, I can't tell if only because they had not gotten there emotionally or because the choice is to keep the intimate situations in closed doors. The thing is, there was a time where the story started to kind of drag to me, and the situations started to feel less intense, less special... it started to be a bit of a task to keep reading and finding will to know what would happen next. I'll say this is due to writing choices, what felt necessary at first, set up things, turned out to be a bit boring as time went on.

Hetta is a likable heroine for the most part but because we cannot have access to all pertinent information before she shares it, and with writing choices giving us hints about possible secrets, there are times she reads as being a little too ignorant and unobservant. In general, all characters seem to be interesting but not special, none had that larger than life feel to them to make me interested. I felt that all were a little superficially presented.... but I know there are three more books focusing on Hetta and the follow-up of what happens in this book, so perhaps that will become solved.

This said, I must cobnfess I don't feel interested enough in Hetta, or in her love interest, to keep reading. If the magical aspects had been richer, more developed, more intense, I might read just for the world building, but I think I'd probably have similar impressions. I will stick to my original idea: I'll read the m/m story later on, which seems to have been written to be a stand alone while still part of the world. I've been reading reviews where it's alluded that m/m story will have some setting up scenes in books #2, #3 and #4, but I think I'll skip them anyway.

Grade: 6/10