I went in expecting romance, fantasy fiction, like it is listed everywhere, and was sorely disappointed when it was just romance. Oh, we get to learn about building a town and how important drainage system is, if you’re into that.

Hi. Welcome (back?) to another book review of a book I finished in a day. We do spoilery reviews here. I would like to thank Victory Editing NetGalley Co-Op for kindly providing the eARC via NetGalley for an honest review. They are a group of indie authors catering to a wide range of reader and have something for everyone.

My initial reaction to this book might seem pretty negative but the storytelling is actually great. Book one of The Empire of the Stars series, Traitor Son, sets up for a unique world and magic system. I wish I could tell you more about it but the author just didn’t disclose much. What we know so far is that there was an uprising against the sitting Emperor, which was then supressed. The traitors were executed and their Houses erased from history. It is a crime to even speak the name of the traitor houses. The MMC, Remin, is the sole survivor of one such house, Duke by birthright. But even though his life is spared, he has been absorbed as page early in life into the court, he has the emperor’s assassins stalking his shadow. But he is competent and when the emperor knights him following a victory in battle, he also tasks him with winning back a border area from a neighboring nation. Remin asks for the disputed area as his dutchy, control of the river that separates the land from the rest of the empire and the emperor’s daughter for his wife.

The emperor actually has two daughter, a bastard one in exile, Ophele. That is the daughter he gives to Remin once he succeeds. Ophele’s mother was a lady’s maid to the empress and was pregnant with her when she was discovered conspiring with the traitors. Ophele remembers her mother saying she is guilty of action which has left Remin an orphan and all alone in the world. But Ophele’s mother is dead now and she has to marry the strange knight she has heard only stories about. She didn’t even know she is the daughter her father promised to Remin up until he showed up at the estate she was exiled in.

The dutchy that Remin’s parents ruled was Tressin and his new dutchy is called Tresingale. He intends to make it the jewel of the empire and wait out the emperor so that… he hasn’t thought that far, he’s really 24. His focus has been getting honor back to his name, being knighted, acquiring land and marrying the emperor’s daughter to give his line legitimacy. He thinks about having lots of children so that his line cannot be erased from history ever again (side-eye). So his life’s misfortune is that his wife really knows nothing about anything. She has never even seen the emperor or received any communication from him. Despite Remin being very suspicious of her, she is not actually an assassin sent by the emperor. And to his dismay, he is falling in love with his wife, poor soul.

That’s all the story is about. It’s a romantasy but I couldn’t tell you about the fantasy elements in here because except for saying other countries have magic and the empire made some kind of deal with the stars to rid themselves of magic and some devils, wolf and skeleton creatures, in the dark, there’s nothing about magic anywhere in this installment.

We don’t know what the conspiracy was about since the bargain with the stars meant the blood of the emperor was holy, so it doesn’t make sense to overthrow him. We don’t know what the devils are, where they come from, why are they attacking, how are they growing in numbers exponently year after year or even if there is any way to stop them. We know that Tresingale, as it stands, is a valley that hopes to be the greatest city of the empire but the duke is living in a hut with his duchess for now.

We get dual pov from Remin and Ophele. They are mostly thinking about the same things, the town and each other. I would have just liked more world-building, past or current, for example, more about the conspiracy or something about the devils or magic, why the bargain was made, what makes the blood of the emperor sacred, anything! This was a frustrating read, I kept waiting for something to happen and then the book ended. Spice rating is 4 out of 5 here, you need something to fill 500 pages, so…

We got a glimpse into book 2 from the pov of the emperor and I was immediately drawn in. If we had the pov of someone in the court, the story would have been far more interesting. This was not bad, per se, but the content of the book didn’t need to be the whole book, it had space for something to happen since there are a lot of foreshadowing that there’s gonna be a lot more politics involved in the series, it just wasn’t there in this book.

If a series needs a whole book before it gets better, is it even a good book or series? Two out of five from me. I will wait to eat my words in this review when book 2 comes out in April because I so want this to be a good series, there’s a lot of potential and pretty good writing, just needs some plot.