I wanted a mature, brilliant protagonist to level up the Celtic mythology, but what I got was a character with no flaws, no rules, and no depth. Final Score: 1.6

Content Disclosure: This review will lightly touch on a sexual assault scene without going into detail. I’ll start the section that talks about this in bold in case you want to skip it entirely.

What Worked Well For Me

I was so excited to finally have a mature female protagonist leading a fantasy novel! We don’t know Scathach’s age, but she is at least mid-30s, likely in her 40s. Even though this book didn’t land for me, I would love to see more mature female protagonists in general, but especially in fantasy!

Cuchulainn has the most depth of any character. I appreciated that we opened with his monstrous reputation as a fierce warrior and then we immediately saw his emotional vulnerability in a way that felt genuine. Again, this is something I wish we had more of with male leads in general, but specifically in the fantasy space.

I’m not very familiar with Celtic mythology, so I appreciated the opportunity to dip my toe into learning about this mythology.

Where It Fell Short For Me

There were significant craft issues right from the start. I already get very frustrated with lore dumps and telling instead of showing, but this had an extra frustrating layer: After the lore dump the exact same information would be repeated via dialogue on the same page! This pattern eased up significantly after 20%, but it was a very rough way for me to start a book and likely significantly impacted how I viewed the rest of the book. The book also opened with very disorienting spatial writing. The narration would say that they couldn’t see a person who is very far away, but then a couple paragraphs later they were discussing details of what that person looked like and could suddenly hear them too when earlier it was muffled - all without moving.

At the beginning of each chapter there was a “snippet” that was usually the thoughts of the other POV’s character, but it was their thoughts at the end of that chapter so each chapter had its own mini spoiler. I think this was meant to make the reader want to read “just one more chapter”, but I found it frustrating to have to constantly switch POVs for each chapter for just a couple of paragraphs. The vast majority of the book is from Scathach’s POV, so it wasn’t until Cuchulainn’s first full POV chapter that I realized the prose issues weren’t just the way Scathach views the world.

The prose was lacking throughout, it’s clear but it felt overly formal and robotic. So even in the times that I wasn’t reading through a lore dump in the exposition, there were times that the characters felt like two NPCs telling each other the lore that they very obviously should have known. There was even a point in the book where Scathach’s daughter directly tells her mother “Yes, I know all that.” There was very little distinction between different characters even though many of them came from different parts of the continent.

Similarly, the pacing never balanced out. The first 30-35% of the book felt like an extended training montage and then the second half of the book almost felt like a different story than the first half.

My biggest issue with this book is Scathach. She’s smart, she’s wise, she’s endlessly talented, she’s the daughter of a deity, everyone loves and adores her, and her magic happens to be able to fix any challenge she comes across. There is quite literally nothing wrong with her, she is perfectly good, which made her bland and boring to me. Any time tension started to build and the stakes were raised, her magic would evolve so she could resolve it with no consistent rules or downsides of using her magic. I don’t mind a soft magic system, but if the magic system is consistently a get out of jail free card with no consequences, it’s not fun.

The romance didn’t work for me here for a few reasons, but I will say I am very much a character driven reader, so me not finding Scathach interesting was always going to color the relationship aspect of this book. It is established that Cuchulainn is an adult in his early 20’s, we learn this because he is only a couple of years older than Scathach’s 19 year old daughter. So while Cuchulainn is an adult, it was more than their 15+ year age gap that bothered me. There are clear power dynamics at play here, I won’t go into details because of spoilers but there are more power dynamics beyond Scathach being Cuchulainn’s teacher at the best training school for warriors. I won’t say that Scathach came off as predatory, but it made me really uncomfortable so I was never able to root for them as a couple.

And then there’s the unnecessary sexual assault scene at the midpoint. While I wouldn’t call the scene itself incredibly graphic, I don’t think I would feel comfortable saying it was handled with care either. Not only was it completely unnecessary in my opinion (the plot would have been fine without it occurring), the resolution is the flawless protagonist saving the day. I already wasn’t loving this book and this was the point that I officially stopped caring. It doesn’t matter what the gender dynamics are in a sexual assault scene, if it’s unnecessarily used as a plot mechanic or to impact the other protagonist’s journey - I don’t like it.

Final Thoughts, Opinions & Recommendations

This is not the worst fantasy novel I have read by far - I think the craft issues at the beginning really frustrated me and even though the initial issues improved, other significant issues took their place for me. There are a lot of elements in this book for people to enjoy, but the bad outweighed the good here for me.

My thanks to NetGalley & William Morrow for the complimentary copy. All opinions are my own.

TL;DR

Would I Recommend it? No Would I Reread it? No Would I Read More From This Author? I won’t rule this author out entirely, but I’m not interested in reading their backlog at this point. Series Information: Standalone

Star Score Breakdown

Personal Enjoyment: 1 Overall Execution: 1.5 Craft & Writing Quality: 1.5 Characters: 2 Plot: 2 Final Score: 1.6