It’s a fascinating impetus for a relationship: one man thinks his all-powerful magic makes him a monster until he finds that he’s still human after all, and the other thinks that he’s frail and burdensome until he discovers that he can bring seemingly infinite power to its knees with a touch. But it also leads to a fundamental problem in the romance arc: Are these two people forming a unique connection…or would they feel this way about literally anybody? I was reading the scene where Arlo and Faenir had just finished enjoying themselves in a public hallway and after they were done, it just seemed they stepped right back out into public, no problem. Finance is provided by PayPal Credit (a trading name of PayPal UK Ltd, Whittaker House, Whittaker Avenue, Richmond-Upon-Thames, Surrey, United Kingdom, TW9 1EH). This book was a full sit down meal, learning the characters and the roles they played, leading into the main story, the tension between the main characters that brings us to the promised spice, the jaw dropping "big boss final battle", and what I can only describe as the queer fantasy book version of a Marvel Studios post credit scene has me salivating for what Ben has coming for the Darkmourn universe sooo much!

This is my first time reading this author and while I enjoyed the story overall (it ticks off a lot of my favorite things) I was a little underwhelmed. Arlo has always taken care of his sister, Auriol, ever since his parents have passed of a terrible sickness he has watched over her. Forced by the bitter Queen to partake in the Choosing, he discovers a single person who can resist the deadly grace of his touch.You truly feel a part of the story while reading it and I was always wanting to go back and continue reading whenever I put it down.

But no, he dies of the unnamed rotting disease he has (this disease is never named throughout the entire novel, its simply "the disease my parents had" and the only symptoms ever listed are coughing up blood. I haven't read the first book in this universe, so my lack of knowledge about the world may be because of that. I was hoping that we would get a slow build up of the enemies to friends to lovers, but by the time I was halfway through the book and they still hated each other, I knew I wasn't getting it. Maybe I was clouded because I knew the author from tiktok and I felt like giving him an opportunity, but let's be real right now, this book sucks. Hands down one of most realistic M/M relationships I've read so far, with no shying away from their sexual desires 🙌🏽 as I mentioned before, the ending felt rushed and I get it, it's a standalone in a series of retellings but I wanted mooorreeeee I could have easily loved a longer ending but that's me being greedy.With the amount of time the author put into us liking Myrinn, the betrayal at the end just felt cheap. It should have been a little less pointless descriptions and trying too hard to be a legit fantasy and more of improving the building of the emotional climaxes and the quality of the sex scenes (I'm usually not looking into that much but since I'm at it, why not mention this too). Ben lives in Oxfordshire and, when not writing, can be found reading, taking Winston - his Labrador - out for long walks, or obsessing over Marvel’s The Scarlet Witch. If the novel had been longer, one of the things that I would have liked to see was Faenir coming to terms with Arlo's mortality or the two of them finding a cure for it and then coming to terms with Arlo's mortality. Just like how Arlo turning into a vampire was an easy out for him not being immortal, or semi-immortal.

I'm all for self-publishing, but if you can't manage to smooth out your manuscript enough that you find it necessary to add a typo warning, you should have found a proof reader. If we gave a totally different person a magic potion that meant you two could fuck, would THAT person be the love of your life in a couple weeks?I have to admit it did take me about 30% of the book for me to really get behind Arlo, but Feynir was such an amazing character. And because he never touched anyone else, he is a virgin (which I actually liked as a plot point) but after the first time couple of times he turned into a beast in the sheets (which I didn't like anymore). I highly recommend checking out LORD OF ETERNAL FLAME, but it isn’t necessary if you want to dive right into this one!