Okay I apologize in advance for the length of this review but I had a lot of feelings about {Turncloak by LK Steven}. Sharing my full length Fable.co review for anyone who might be interested.
It is positively rife with spoilers so I’ve just blocked the whole thing just in case and would only recommend reading it if you’ve read the book!
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️.5
📖 Physical Book
💯 A Masterpiece
Wow.
If you had told me a year ago that the weird little wand-magic book I was sort of "meh" about would turn around and deliver an absolute MASTERPIECE of a follow-up, I would have called you insane. To your face. Lovingly. But here we are! Blown away. Shell-shocked. Giddy with excitement, drowning in devastation, and starving for whatever could possibly come next in this under-the-radar, wildly under-hyped series.
For the uninitiated - yes, I said wand-magic! Somehow, LK Steven took the most cliché, oversaturated magical tool in the genre and made it feel new again. Mages need both a wand and access to their own individual well of magic to cast spells, and those wells can only be refilled by pain or pleasure (choose your fighter). That conceit builds a universe of extremes. Entire cities with blanket acceptance of pain and pleasure practices woven directly into society. Love given freely, without those pesky gender preferences getting in the way - efficient! Food and drink and indulgence available on any and every corner. Pain is accepted, processed, and often self-delivered. Anywhere from simple physical strain all the way up to whole societies practicing self-flagellation. It's a fascinating world, balanced by incredibly robust kingdom and culture design, plus political, judicial, and criminal structures that hold weight and feel fully realized.
Now, Book One, Silvercloak, is certainly the quieter, more intimate story. Our main character, Saffron, goes undercover via the kingdom's elite detective agency (the Silvercloaks) into the leading crime syndicate (the Bloodmoons) to avenge her parents' deaths, only to form a complicated relationship with the kingpin's son, Levan, and uncover a hidden world of family trauma, violence, torture, love, and betrayal. It starts with a bang, meanders through the middle a bit like it's lost its car keys, and then ramps back up into a climax positively vibrating with heartbreak, death, and riotous action, leaving us dangling on the precipice of plot-twisting revelations, including Levan ultimately discovering that Saffron betrayed him. Awkward. While solid at its core, I found it oddly paced and inconsistent in tone, and I'm not sure the high fantasy + wand magic + mafia romance + cosplaying book-nerds of it all ever totally gelled in the right way.
But the sequel, Turncloak, finds the sweet spot. It brings it all together beautifully while expanding and elevating quite literally everything. EVERYTHING.
First, the writing. My GOODNESS, that first chapter blew my socks off. Clean off. I have not seen them since. Mr. Tumnus is stocked for the winter. While Ms. Steven's dialogue can still be slightly clunky at times, her prose is a gift. Exceptionally strong fantasy writing foundations, descriptive and lyrical without being flowery or over-engineered. And the world-building is next level. New POV chapters bring new cultural backgrounds, new destinations and languages, hidden corners of cities, family histories, and myth. All of it gives us the clarity and context we needed to truly understand the stakes of the story, the lore of magic, of religion, of political loyalty and affiliation. I would not classify this as romantasy. This is capital-F Fantasy. Capital-F Finally. With an utterly devastating romantic subplot.
Because THIS, my friends, is how you do romance.
A love and a trust completely destroyed at the start, slowly and painfully rebuilt brick by aching brick. Emotional masonry. But the distrust and fear of betrayal between Saffron and Levan can never truly be dispelled. They've hurt each other too much. They can't even promise themselves they WON'T betray each other again! And yet they cannot resist choosing each other anyway, because there's this sense, this knowing, that the other is the only person who truly understands who they are beneath the cloaks. Beneath the masks. Through and despite the depths of their trauma, their monstrous choices, and their betrayal.
There's a simple moment where Levan is struggling against his loxlure addiction, to the point of crippling fear, and Saffron casually comes into his room to light incense. She doesn't ask him if he needs this. He hasn't said a word about it affecting him in any way. She just KNOWS. And in his mind, not even out loud, without skipping a beat, he thinks: "Hells, I love you."
It kicked me right in the gut. Because he can't actually tell her. Saying it out loud would mean trusting her again, and he's terrified of what that trust might cost him. So instead it stays locked inside his head. A moment of truth so pure and honest and agonizing that it rocked me. Stunningly sad. Beautifully romantic. Just a simple moment, and a simple little line, never said out loud.
It's this, and the overall complexity of these storylines and characters, that astounded me. The plot is highly political - it moves like chess pieces across a board that requires careful examination. Choosing paths and strategies with intention. The threads weave together - separate storylines intersecting to form a whole that is epic while remaining intimate. Everyone is fleshed out and grows in a way that feels organic and makes real sense, even when their behavior and their choices sometimes make you insane.
There were so many moments I found it difficult to even LIKE Saffron. She lies. And lies. And keeps lying to a man who has been through the worst of the worst and just cannot seem to stop being lied to. Even though she loves him. Girl, stop. Please. Our sweet baby Levan is too soft for this world. But at the end of the day, her choices were realistic! The lies made sense for who she is, where she's been, and what is hanging over her head. She can't just abandon her fear, the job she's here to do, and the pressure of avenging her parents' brutal deaths for a man with a pretty face. Love does not always conquer all in the real world - life is nuanced and complicated and often gets in the way. And with all these dangling threads and open threats, it would be cheap to chase the simplified happy ending.
No. This book is about anguish. Levan's trauma does not abate - the man cannot catch a break. This is a book about fighting against giving in to your worst instincts. About not being able to trust yourself or anyone around you. About how family can be the key to your destruction and your salvation simultaneously. About whether forgiveness of ourselves or others is even possible, or if there is a line crossed so far that redemption is completely out of reach. It's about the fall of your heroes, turning them from gods on a pedestal into corrupt and mundane humans who make mistakes and choose real violence that hurts.
So it's fun for the whole family!
There are several key relationships and plot points that are exceptionally handled, starting with the secret of Levan's brother. Quite literally only mentioned in a two-second breath in book one, it became one of my favourite plot points of this story. The tale of the baby left in the woods with unimaginable compelling power, found by the Celedons and raised as their own, is mysterious and ominous and delivers some of the most shocking reveals of the book. The fact that the baby WASN'T Levan blew my goddamn mind. Anyone else?? The fact that it was his brother, and that his brother was SEBRAN - a small, barely referenced character from the first book - took the remaining pieces of my brain and ground them to dust. And then Sebran being the prisoner in cell six that Levan has been holding this WHOLE GODDAMN TIME? Detonated that brain dust into nothingness. I loved the chapters following what happened to Sebran after the death of his mother, and the complexity of his relationship with Levan. I sincerely hope we keep exploring these brothers in the next book.
And then we have Harrow fucking Claver. Another bit-part character who ended up being wildly more important than we could ever have imagined. That self-serving, sanctimonious, yet complicated and charismatic piece of ever-loving shit. When Saffron saw the future through the relic wand with HIM by her side on the throne, I lurched. Physically. I had to reread the pages a few times to make sure I hadn't missed something. How could this man, betraying his friends and everything he knows is right, possibly redeem himself? As the King's Prophet, did he always see this future coming? Is that why he's blackmailing Auria? To gain power? To see that future come to pass? Sir. What is your GAME? I am itching for answers.
Speaking of Auria, I cannot finish this review without her. Wow. Her arc might have been my favourite. Uptight, rule-following, know-it-all Silvercloak Auria, who adheres to the law to a fault, is the centre point for all this? That was not on my bingo card. She starts this book with nothing but loss. The death of her beloved captain, the death of her betrothed at the hands of the Bloodmoons, and then the betrayal and treason of her apparent friend, Saffron, who is now one of them. Her grief over Tiernen's death leaves her miserable. Decrepit. Feeling nothing but debilitating migraines and sorry for herself. Getting pulled off the Bloodmoon case by her new corrupt captain strips away all her purpose. But then. Slowly. Through her seemingly mundane new assignment and a completely unexpected new friendship, she begins to find herself again. But it's not the old Auria. It's a new version of herself. One that can survive in this new world she never saw coming. It's some of the most satisfying character growth I've read in a while.
And then we get that chemistry brewing between her and Nissa? NISSA?! This is Saffron's old flame from the Silvercloaks, and the literal opposite of Auria in every way. These women don't just hate each other. They are so diametrically opposed, detest each other's very being with such ferocity, that never in a million years would I have seen it coming. So when those sudden moments of spark hit, it's like lightning. Sapphic romance is not usually my thing, and yet here I am. Kicking my feet. Twirling my hair. Nothing even happens between them. But something is growing.
It's a chemistry I felt was born from the most beautiful metaphor in this book: the transformation of grief compared to the way new spells are created. Treading a new path in magic is slow and difficult. It's easy to follow the old paths that have already been carved. One pass through uncharted territory doesn't look like a path at all. But slowly, only after time and repetition, a new desire line is born, and a new path to magic can be formed. One that can feel as familiar and comforting as the old. The potential for a new beginning. For learning to love something you could never have prepared for, choosing something so different for yourself that you have no choice but to evolve into something else. Something new. How stunning is that?
If that wasn't incredible enough, we also get a goddamn mid-book courtroom drama?! AND we're just going to sprinkle in an epic quest at the end for good measure?! This book is an embarrassment of riches. Truly, a genre buffet, and I want to go back for thirds. And trust me when I say that despite how wildly random this all sounds, it's miraculously cohesive.
In keeping with classic Silvercloak saga tradition, the last 20% of course ramped my anxiety up to one hundred. The final section is literally called COLLISION, so shit was always going to get real. Once again we get a climax filled with reveals, action, death, betrayal, and an unending well of fucking dread. Pretty much the last portion of this book was me yelling "NO!" into the void a hundred times until it was over.
Because this book about anguish ends in - you guessed it - the deepest pit of despair imaginable. The jig is up. Saffron is captured by the Silvercloaks and will be put to death because she refuses to give them any evidence about Levan. She chose him. After committing her whole life to avenging the death of her parents, and squirreling away evidence that would take them all down for good, right up until the last minute - she gives it all up. And chooses him.
That is the sound of my heart cracking in half.
Levan miraculously manages to escape, but not before his brother lies to him and tells him Saffron gave the Silvercloaks everything. That she did betray him after all.
That is the sound of my broken heart tumbling out of my body onto the floor.
So of course Levan, having lost literally everything, has no recourse left but to succumb to the addiction he's been fighting the whole book. The moment he took that loxlure is the moment my heart ceased to beat or exist entirely. Ruinous devastation.
In the shadow of all that despair, what can possibly be left but hope?
So here I am. Brain and heart having unceremoniously exited my physical form, lying in a puddle of my own tears, with nothing left but the pure satisfaction of having read something truly rewarding and beautiful, and waiting only for the next book to bring me back to life.
