Warrior Princess Assassin by Brigid Kemmerer: review

4/5 stars on Goodreads

Warrior Princess Assassin by Brigid Kemmerer

Warrior Princess Assassin starts the Braided Fate fantasy trilogy and is the author’s first foray into adult fantasy after several YA series. I liked her Cursebreakers trilogy, but her other books haven’t excited me as much. Here, the author shakes the romantasy tropes and does it well.

The book is narrated by its three eponymous characters. Princess Marjoriana is 25, and about to be married to Maddox Kyronan, 30, the king of the neighbouring kingdom; the warrior. Then there’s Asher, once a son of a courtier and Jory’s childhood friend, now a former slave turned assassin.

Jory’s kingdom needs Ky’s fire magic to drive away a warring kingdom from their border. Ky needs the weather magic of Jory’s father to heal the crops in his kingdom. It’s outwardly a straightforward political alliance, but both are holding secrets that might ruin the agreement.

And then the ruin comes from an unexpected direction. Assassins’ guild is hired to kill both, and they send Asher. He’s unwilling to kill his childhood sweetheart, and she doesn’t want him to kill Ky either. The three become allies out of necessity, because Asher knows the guild will keep sending assassins until everyone is dead.

The three flee to Ky’s kingdom. But assassins are after them, and they have no idea who’s behind the killing orders. And Ky’s kingdom isn’t a safe place either, because his people hold him responsible for the failed crops and uncontrollable fires. And he can’t tell them who really is behind it.

This was a fairly straightforward start to an epic fantasy, with plenty of action and a few good twists. I guessed who would betray them from the moment they were introduced, and there were a couple of inconsistencies that annoyed me (for example, the book takes place in winter, yet everyone expects the crops to be thriving), but the political plot wasn’t the most important part of the story. What made the book interesting was the romantic plot that unfurled slowly and carefully.

In romantic fantasy, there’s a tried-and-true trope of two suitors, one of which wins the girl in the end while the other turns out to be the villain—a trope the author has used herself before. She departs from that from the start though. I feared it would lead to a reverse harem story—the men both having the woman while basically ignoring one another—which never works for me. But the author went for a three-way romance where all three are genuinely attracted to other two, and she did it well.

The lynchpin of the relationship isn’t Jory, the sheltered maiden, or Ky, the strong protector. It’s Asher, the traumatised former sex slave who has trouble being touched. His trauma is unravelled slowly and dealt with respect, as Ky gently helps him. Asher is the one who realises Ky’s traumas, the one who knows how sheltered Jory has been, and the one with most experience in three-way sex. By the time the first bedroom scene takes place at the end of the book, all three are in the same mental space—as is the reader—and while they don’t go all the way, the act brings them together as a three-person unit that will face the future together.

What would’ve been a pretty mundane and fairly simple epic fantasy romance turned out to be more interesting because of the characters and their relationships. Jory was perhaps the weakest link in the end, her character that of a YA heroine despite her age, but she’s growing. Ky was saved from being an all-powerful hero with his own trauma. Asher wasn’t a pushover or a weakling despite his past. And hopefully the men will heal during the course of the story. Looking forward to reading more.

I received a free copy from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.