Villains and Virtues by A. K. Caggiano

This review is for the entire trilogy and it’s pretty damn good. It’s nothing too serious, but honestly the world-building is doing the most, and I mean that in a good way. You get so many different fantasy genres of characters in this one series and they all come with these very richly described settings and personalities and it’s never too stereotypical and yet it feels familiar in a satisfying way. And I feel like that’s true of the main characters as well. You get kind of that more hardened, more evil, pessimistic guy partnered with that very positive, bright, young-presenting woman, and yet that’s not at all what it is. I feel like this trilogy is playing with that stereotype of “young virginal woman attracted to older darker man,” and it recognizes the grossness that is inherent in that setup and completely turns it on its head while preserving everything about that setup that we all kind of morosely enjoy, mostly because it’s usually happening in a world that is completely devoid of all the actual grossness and danger of our present reality.

And that’s what good fantasy fiction romance does; it takes a concept and a setup that absolutely would not work in our present day situation, because the power differential and the danger is so very real here, and puts it in a world that creates safety around that, where there’s not someone waiting to control you with affection and desire, but a real compulsion to keep you actually safe. The fantasy representative in these types of books is that toxic masculinity only exists in the characters that are the actual villains, those that will not succeed, and the men that are our heroes actually do selflessly support these women characters; and the strength of these women, rather than offending and threatening the masculinity of the real men in these books, actually attracts them the most. That is the purest form of fantasy that can ever exist.