In a world of faerie high court tales be an Olivia Wildenstein.
It’s no secret fairy smut is pretty popular right now. BookTok and Sara J. Maas have kicked off a reader passion for more adult oriented fairy tales, though the smut levels of the popular series vary. There’s very little in the first book of Olivia Wildenstein’s Kingdom of the Crows series.
The book focuses on Fallon, a halfling in a world where the pure blood fae caste rules with an iron hand, keeping all others in their place well below the shining island where they rule. Having taken over through two wars that subjugated all the other races, Fallon recognizes the unfairness of her world. What she doesn’t know is what to do about, especially since everyone seems to know there’s something strange about her. Tired of everyone lying to her and the constant pressure to be a good, compliant, unremarkable girl, she travels to the human island one night where a seer bids her to find and release five iron crows so she can become queen.
Convinced that this is the path to letting her finally be with her long time crush, the fae prince Dante, and incredible tired of the status quo, Fallon undertakes the journey which will change her and the world forever.
Wildenstein’s world setting is based on Italy (a nice change from all the Gaelic and English set fae worlds), but it’s her writing that makes this book truly stand out. Utterly brilliant and poetic, the setting and characters are built up artfully, nested in a complex world of friendship, secrets, and morality. Even the oppressiveness of the world is so delicately spun that the reader knows the ark, filthy underbelly is there, but it’s easy to overlook it, like Fallon does, in a quest to just survive in the world. The depths of the magic, unique chosen one angle are also present, but Fallon spends all of this book, and much of the next as a powerless woman just trying to do what she feels is right.
I highly recommend this book as a stand out from the “House of Fairy Smut” trend at the very least for the author’s prose and world building skills.