Book Review: A Breath of Sunlight by Sydney Winward
Genre(s): Fantasy romance
Calle is a fae prince sentenced to a life of slavery by his wicked and jealous brother, the Sun King. Made to suffer for years in a mining pit, he begins to lose hope and wish for death. Weakened and miserable he believes there is no escape and no hope of rescue.
Skaja is a harpy warrior raised by a group of valkyries with a hatred of men. When her clan raids the mining pit where Calle is held, they kill every male they come across—both slaves and slavers alike—and spare only the women. Inexplicably, Skaja is unable to kill Calle even though she has the chance to do so, and she returns later to extract him from the pit, though she doesn’t understand why. She decides to aide Calle on his journey to a friend’s home. If the valkyries learn she’s not only spared a man’s life, but assisted him too, she will be severely punished.
I liked the storyline and the characters involved. They each had their own strengths and weaknesses and it was fun to see their interactions, given their inherent opposition to one another. There were a few scenes in the first half of the book that felt a bit forced, but as the story developed, the character interactions became much better and began to seem more organic.
Although it’s a romance, there was a fair bit of action in the form of fight scenes. I think some of the action sequences in the book were my favorite parts. They seemed to be well developed and believable, yet weren’t gory or gruesome.
The writing itself was decent, though at times there were some odd stylistic and phrasing choices that distracted me from the storytelling. Again, this seemed more prevalent in the first part of the book and the writing became better as it went on.
It’s definitely a book that took some time to grow on me, but overall, I liked it—and it had a happy ending.
Author website: sydneywinward.com
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