In an isolated fortress, the Master of Crows battles an ancient god for possession of his soul. Renegade and heretic, he dreams of ways to defeat the god and destroy the priesthood who would execute him. Sent by her masters to betray him, a woman comes who possesses a weapon he can use to triumph over both…but only at the ultimate sacrifice. A tale of love and allegiance.

Warnings: Slavery, Depictions of abuse

Category: M/F

Master of Crows is a fantasy romance novel set in a world of deities, magic, and magicians. It’s a pretty fun little romance read that hits the usual beats for a story like this, and will be sure to please if you’re a fan of these tropes.

WRITING
The story follows Silhara, a sinister crow mage, who has been singled out by an evil banished god to be his avatar by which to re-enter the world to renew his quest for world domination. Silhara has to fight off the deity if he wants to remain in control of his own body and not be seduced down the path of evil. Meanwhile the local mages are mistrustful of him, and send in slave girl Martice as a spy. Their relationship grows from a antagonistic one to one of mutual trust and respect and eventually to love as they come together to figure out a way to deal with the evil deity once and for all, and hopefully reclaim Martice’s freedom as well. It’s a well paced story and it certainly does rely on genre tropes a fair bit, so if those genre tropes are ones you fancy you’re in for a good time. If you tend to dislike formula writing, well, this is pretty standard romance fare and is unlikely to throw you for any loops.

EMOTIONAL ENGAGEMENT
I had a hard time understanding why the characters start off with such an intense dislike for each other- both of them have their own baggages they are dealing with, and that causes them to react to each other with sparks. However it didn’t feel like that antagonism made too much sense, given how little they knew of each other and it wasn’t very well established why they would so instantly opposed to one another. That said, once the mutual feelings started being developed the story was very sweet and the characters felt a lot more likable. The author did a very nice job of creating good chemistry for them as they work together.

WORLDBUILDING
This story has an interesting world! It is mostly a fairly typical high fantasy sort of setting, with an official organization of magic users with their own political landscape and dramas, deities and cultures. I really enjoyed the way the author let us get glimpses of a few different aspects of the world at large, including working in Silhara’s cultural background into the narrative and showcasing different kinds of people in different areas. The magic system- the soul-binding that has enslaved Martice, the deities that need avatars for reincarnation, the spellcasting system- all of it is fairly lightly explored, enough that the story makes sense and Martise’s eventually revealed magical specialty ends up being a large feature in the story as well.

STEAMINESS
This has some fairly well written romance and eventually sex, though it is entirely vanilla in nature. From the description of the story I had been hoping for some harder fare from the ‘sinister crow mage’ but it turns out he’s really a sweet and misunderstood guy. I liked the way the sex was written, even if it was rather soft. There is an unfortunate amount of harping on Martise prior to the developed relationship about her looks though, Silhara being unattracted to her at first being a primary focal point of the plot, and him having to overcome that and grow into being attracted to her is very strange to me. Maybe its to feed into a fantasy of a man being able to look past conventional beauty standards. Not necessarily bad, but not really my thing either.

Altogether a very solid romantasy novel. If you like your romance with a touch of the magical and the fantastical, this is a great bet! It is sure to give you a good time, and let you engage with an enchanted world and some sweet characters. A bit vanilla for me, but then, most romance novels tend to be.

Have you read Master of Crows? Let me know what YOU thought by leaving me a comment!

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