Tuesday Reviews: The Midnight King

 

A king should know better than to make an enemy of his wife.

Hours after her wedding, Aurora stood over her husband with a blade to his throat. Desperate to slay his beasts before they doom her world, she made a reckless bargain—become a pawn to a despicable queen in exchange for royal status and an army. But even a princess’ tiara might not be enough to destroy the beasts her husband created.

Theron has been outplayed by his traitor bride. He should be furious that he’s returning home with an enemy army nipping at his heels, except he can’t fully hate the beautiful new wife who outwitted him. Convinced he can win Aurora back and turn her army around, Theron offers her something irresistible—help mastering her time magic.

Neither Aurora’s insolent soldiers nor her cunning husband can be fully trusted. Yet the closer she gets to Theron’s kingdom, the blurrier the line between friend and foe becomes. All Aurora knows for certain is that if she fails to master both her magic and her heart, the tragedies of history are doomed to repeat themselves.

The Midnight King is the second epic fantasy romance novel in the Cycle of Calamity series where The Legend of Zelda meets a Bronze Age Outlander. If you love fated romance, time travel, court intrigue, and enemies to lovers, escape into The Midnight King!

I really enjoyed The Oracle of Dusk, so I was excited to jump back into Aurora and Theron’s story with The Midnight King. This one definitely expands the world with more magic, politics, secrets, betrayal, and quite a few twists I didn’t see coming. I really liked seeing Aurora come more into her powers while also trying to figure out who she can actually trust and what choices she’s willing to make. But honestly, Aurora and Theron together were probably my favorite part. Their relationship is complicated, neither of them is completely good or bad, and there’s still plenty of tension between them as everything around them gets messier. I also really liked the time magic aspect and how much more we get to learn about the bigger world in this book. There were a few parts that dragged a little for me, but once things got moving again, I wanted to know what happened next. Overall, this was a really solid continuation of the series with enemies-to-lovers, court politics, magic, high stakes, and plenty of twists. I’m definitely curious to see where Elyse Thomson takes Aurora and Theron next