Title: The Bloodless Princes
Author: Charlotte Bond
Publication Date: October 29, 2024 by Tordotcom
Genres: Fantasy
Protagonist Gender: Female
Two books in, and I am absolutely in love with Charlotte Bond's fantasy. She takes the familiar tropes of myth, legend, and fairy tale and spins new life from them, evoking the same sense of awe, admiration, and affection in her readers. On the surface, they seem to be simple stories of straightforward quests, but beneath that surface she deconstructs and reinterprets those familiar tropes, creating something subtly meaningful.
In The Fireborne Blade, she used flashbacks to tell her story, weaving together past and present, sprinkling it with archive reports of other knights and their dragon encounters. Here, in The Bloodless Princes, she forgoes flashbacks in favor of folklore, sharing stories that often contradict one another, leaving us entirely uncertain as to what really happened to shape the underworld and its princes.
While the first book was largely Maddileh's, with Saralene only coming into it through the backdoor of flashbacks, here the women are friends, allies, and an almost couple, carrying the narrative and its quest together. In place of Maddileh's squire we get a very different kind of sidekick, one with wings and horns and fur and murder paws, but you'll have to meet her for yourself. The entire concept of the underworld here, especially with its conflicting origin stories, is wonderful, so well thought out and carefully detailed that it felt as much a country as an afterlife.
Like any good fairy tale or myth, there are sacrifices to be made, riddles to be puzzled, promises to be examined, and bargains to be made. The Bloodless Princes is a fantastic story on its own, and even better as a sequel, and I truly hope we'll get to encounter these ladies again.
Rating: ♀ ♀ ♀ ♀ ♀
My sincere thanks to the publisher for sending me an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
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