The Crown Princess of Zyria was born to wear the crown….but what if she wants more?
My life was organised since birth until the carefully constructed plans exploded like a supernova. The lick of flames began when I decided to sacrifice myself for my planet and my people.
Abducted into the stars I dreamed of, I have no choice but to embrace the part of me I have always hidden—the fighter, the warrior, and the imperfect, crass woman who doesn’t resemble the impeccable princess I am expected to be. Instead of using my silver tongue to fight my battles, I now hold true weapons, and for the first time since the crown was placed on my head, I feel whole.
Evil is flooding the galaxy, and for some reason, destiny has chosen me to stop it. The only problem is, I don’t know how. Luckily, I meet some men along the way who are willing to follow me on this mission. If the king could see me now, draped in leather and wielding pistols and knives rather than wearing ballgowns and reading old scrolls, he would collapse onto his golden throne.
Now, I fight my way across the cosmos to try and stop the destruction of everything we know.
I was ready to give up my life, my future, and my body, but I never expected to lose my heart along the way.
Stars, don’t let me fail now.
This wound up feeling very drawn out, with the ending seemingly starting in the 80% mark but there was denouement after denouement, with like five “endings”. The opening was much faster paced, albeit a bit generically evil bad guys who look scary and break their word and are into raping women and blowing up planets for funsies. Lots of action in the plot, driving forward pretty fast, so that created quite a juxtaposition when they suddenly weren’t doing anything anymore.
Saffron (not an ideal name for a princess imo especially shortened to Saff or Saffy) is good at bossing people around which works surprisingly often for her. She’s pretty badass if naive.
The smut is kind of over the top, with Saffron going rapidly from “it’s my duty to stay a virgin and marry whoever my dad says” to “I’m gonna bang two guys at the same time for my first time” 😳 I have only read one other reverse harem before and I think it’s not for me. Too many POV characters, too many character arcs, not enough time to do all the relationships justice so a lot of instalove. This was over 500 pages to try to give her enough one on one time with everyone. I feel like reverse harem is trying to collect one lover of all types and get all the sci-fi romance tropes in (reptile-influenced alien, warrior, cyborg, brothers) so there’s something for everyone? The creepiest was the older (200 year old???) bodyguard who fell in love with her when she was 16 (grooooooosssssss even though chaste).
This was an exciting space opera but weighed down by lengthy declarations of love, too many sex scenes, and a dragging ending.
Really pretty cover. Maybe looks a little YA though, and it decidedly is not 😉
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