Review: Vow of the Shadow King by Sylvia Mercedes


Vow of the Shadow King
(Bride of the Shadow King #2)
Sylvia Mercedes
Publisher: Self-published
Publication date: Oct. 10, 2022
Genre: New Adult Fantasy
Rating:

Her deceit discovered, Faraine finds herself trapped in the Shadow Realm at the mercy of her new husband. She’s surrounded by enemies, far from any allies, and her best bet for survival is to convince Vor to send her home.

But to do so means to give up on the alliance. Which would spell disaster for her people.

With the tremors growing worse and poison spreading through his realm, Vor is more desperate than ever to find a solution. Only, it cannot involve his wife. Vor wants nothing to do with the woman he has inadvertently married. At one time, he thought he might love her, but now? How can love flourish where trust is broken?

When circumstances require them to spend more time together, however, Vor’s blood is stirred in ways he doesn’t like to acknowledge.

Can two lost hearts find healing and hope in one another? Or is their love already poisoned beyond recovery?

 

My thoughts…

This story picks up right where the previous story left off. However, there were some things that take place in this story that left me unsure, and sadly, they never truly get answered in this book. In the first book we met Vor and Farraine as Vor traveled to the human world for a marriage alliance. He fell for Farraine, only to have to marry her sister. Things got screwed up, Farraine took her sisters place under disguise and now here we are. Vor’s torn between hurt, anger, and uncertainty thanks to the decisions Farraine made. Meanwhile, Farraine is just off in her own selfish world of “I wanna stay, don’t send me back!”

Now granted, there’s more to this story than that.  There’s forbidden dark services taking place, deadly monsters popping up more frequently, devastating earthquakes ravaging Vor’s realm, and someone keeps poisoning him in order for him to kill Farraine. That’s all on top of the complicated romance between these two. While that might sound like a lot, I did find myself getting bored quite a bit in this story. Mainly because I felt like a lot of the problems could be solved with just talking it out and figuring out what’s going on. But of course, we can’t have the characters do that.

I think the one thing that really bothered me was that things were brought up and then never really resolved in this story. We just kept getting more and more added to the pile. I’m not sure if the next book is the last and things will be resolved or not. Honestly, I’m not sure I can sit through another book if it’s like this one. I really wish that we had figured out who was giving Vor the “rage juice” to kill Farrain. That seemed like an easy check to mark off during this book, but that mystery was never solved. Nothing was. We were just given more questions.

I enjoyed the first book in this story and thought the world that the author created was rather interesting, but I do not think I will be continuing on with this series. I had a hard time finishing this one and I just don’t see myself lining up for another go at it only to have more questions instead of answers.

 

Previous reviews from Bride of the Shadow King
Bride of the Shadow King

 

 

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