• Published: 27 September, 2022
• Pages: 421
• Genre(s): Fantasy, Romance
• Series: The Shepherd King #1

Elspeth Spindle lives with a monster she calls the “Nightmare” trapped in her mind; he protects her, and he keeps her secrets. When Elspeth meets a mysterious highwayman on the forest road, she is thrust into a quest to cure her Kingdom of the dark magic plaguing it. With high stakes, and the true identity of the mysterious stranger to contend with, Elspeth also has to reckon with the reality of the “Nightmare” who’s slowly beginning to take over her mind.

I’ve been meaning to read this duology for a while as it seems to be quite popular. Any review I’ve seen of this book/ series so far has also been extremely positive. The synopsis of this book intrigued me a lot and I have to say that I enjoyed it a lot! This series did a very good at immersing the reader into the world of the story, and I found myself thoroughly fascinated by every aspect.

Magic Systems, Character Motivations, and

I really enjoyed getting into the magic system of this universe, it felt super unique and that was really exciting. I thought the use of the providence cards was interesting – the fact that gaining magic would be abhorrent, and yet using the ‘magical’ cards was something to be envied and showed power. The progression of the magic system and how the lore of the universe affected it was very well developed and made sense.

The characters felt very human to me. Their individual motivations were understandable and I found myself rooting for them very organically. The characters were written very well overall, I loved the characters I was meant to love and thoroughly despised the characters I was meant to hate. Although I did really enjoy and root for the characters, something held me back from connecting to them at the level I would have liked. I’m not entirely sure of the reason for it, maybe I would have liked to see them developed a bit more outside of the circumstances they were forced into plot-wise.

I really liked the romances in this series, especially Ione and Elm. I thought Elspeth and Ravyn fit very well together, however I found that their relationship wasn’t developed enough for me. Both Ione and Elm, and Elspeth and Ravyn had the same amount of time to develop but I found that Ione and Elm felt more organic.

Final Thoughts:

I really enjoyed The Shepherd King Duology and I rated it 4 out of 5 stars. I ended up really absorbed by the characters and romances in this story. The magic system was by far my favourite part of the duology, it was very well developed and each time there was more information added it became more and more fascinating to me. I would definitely recommend this series, especially for those that love an interesting, yet digestible, magic system.