Rings of Fate by Melissa de la Cruz – Book Review

Book Rating: ⭐⭐.5

Series: Curses and Crowns Series (Book 1)

Genre: Adult Fantasy Romance

Spice: Hot

Summary:

Aren Bellamore runs a tavern in the small country town of Evansdale, and she’s not interested in marriage. She is interested in seeing her younger sisters married so she can close the Raven’s Beak and see the world. So, when she learns a prince is coming to her small town to find a bride, she knows one of her sisters will catch his eye. But when the prince’s delegation arrives, things don’t quite go to plan.

Prince Dietan is living a lie. To the world he’s a playboy prince traveling through the countryside of Alarice searching for a bride. But he’s actually looking for someone to help remove from his body the Rings of Fate – a legendary, powerful weapon that allows its wearer to control wind. When his plans in Evandale fall through, he needs to find a fake bride to continue keeping up appearances that all is well while he continues his search.

Aren and Dietan realize they can provide each other with exactly what they need: freedom to see the world and a perfect cover story. But their journey across the continent will be filled with danger from an imminent war, and as they navigate a fake relationship that might just turn out to be real, will they find what they are truly looking for?

Reaction:

For me, the Rings of Fate technically hit everything I like to see in a fantasy book: a quest fraught with danger, strangers coming together over a common goal, and elements of magic throughout. Unfortunately, it didn’t flow in the same way those great quest-based fantasy books do, the magic was an afterthought, and the characters fell a bit flat, leading this to be a mediocre read for me.

The story started out strong. The premise of a barmaid getting fake engaged to a prince and going on a quest with him sounded fun and at the start the characters seemed vibrant and interesting. But even before the quest got started, I was questioning whether their plan was really that well thought out, and I continued to doubt it. As the quest got going, it seemed formulaic like the author was focusing on hitting points on a timeline to get them to their destination, and less on how the new places and events impacted the characters, especially Aren as she was seeing the world outside of Evandale for the first time. This led to a disconnect between the plot and characters’ development that I kept running into throughout the book.

The world-building and magic system also left a lot on the table for me. Evandale seemed well-established from descriptions, but there were a lot of other places Aren and Dietan pass through that just felt blurred, like I was missing some details. Beyond the high-level politics, there isn’t a lot of characterizing of the societies or religions of the areas – they all seem very generic. A lot of the magic was tied in with wind, so my expectation would be that their society would tie back in some way to wind, either positive or negative. But that theme wasn’t really extended beyond the magic. It just felt like there were a lot of opportunities to further develop the world and magic system that weren’t taken.

At the beginning of the book, I was really enjoying Aren and Dietan as individual characters. Aren seemed sassy and confident and had these goals and dreams that a modern girl could appreciate, even if there is a bit of “I’m not like other girls” going on. Dietan was maybe a little cliché at times, but his story was interesting enough, and I thought his occasional aloofness was cute. But as the story progressed, there was very little character development, if not character regression going on. Aren’s personality seemed to be nonexistent after leaving Evandale except when she was teasing Dietan. Dietan shows absolutely no interest in learning how to control his powers, even if he shows some improvement in his relationships. There were also a lot of aspects of their characters that made me think they would be a better fit in a young adult novel: inability to accept help and a lack of forethought, for example. Some of the supporting characters seemed interesting, but none of them were present long enough in the story to become meaningful for me. Overall, I think this aspect of the book is what really lost me.

Like other areas, the romance seemed interesting at the beginning, what with the banter and the disparate class aspects, but I wasn’t feeling it as the book progressed. It seemed like all the elements were there, but probably due to how I was feeling about the characters themselves I couldn’t get into their relationship.

Overall, I thought this book started off strong but faltered as it went on with a lack of world-building and character development. The concepts were interesting when they were introduced, but the follow-through wasn’t up to the standards set by the best romantasy books out there right now.

Thanks to Entangled Publishing for an Advanced Reader Copy in exchange for my honest review.