Julia Ember

Her voice was her prison... Now it’s her weapon. In a world where magic is sung, a powerful mage named Cadence must choose between the two. For years, she has been forced to torture her country’s disgraced nobility at her ruthless queen’s bidding. But when she is reunited with her childhood friend, a noblewoman with ties to the underground rebellion, she must finally make a choice: Take a stand to free their country from oppression, or follow in the queen’s footsteps and become a monster herself. In this dark and lush LGBTQ+ romantic fantasy, two young women from rival factions must work together to reunite their country, as they wrestle with their feelings for each other.

Ruinsong

Apiecalypse Jen

Asvini Koneswaran

** spoiler alert **
           dont mind how long it took to finish this book- i woulda finished this book faster but i was occupied by other sorts of literacy.. cougHfanfictionCOUGH - ANYWYAS onto the review

since i read this book so… sporadically, i dont have a full feeling of this book, but i will still try to talk abt things i liked n didnt like abt the book. 

I feel like id be too generous giving this book a 5 star, i mean its a fantasy sapphic book, how could i not ahah. i feel like if this was turned into a series we couldve gotten a better look into some characters and relationships, even between Cadence and Remi, and i wish i had gotten to know more about the revolution group against the queen (the antagonist, who reins terror against her citizens for her joy). 

though despite it being short, i still liked lots of elements of this book (cadence being horny for remi like most of the book 💀) i feel like the transition to remi hating Cadence to her somewhat liking cadence was random? like i felt like remi only sucked up to her because she wanted smth from cadence, which was to help save her dad that was being held captive for being the revolutions head leader. that was a handful.

but i still liked the whole vibe of the story of this evil queen and a lowly singer like cadence being able to stand up to her and fight her, something nobody else could to as nobody dared fight the queen. i also liked ren a lot. ren being another singer that can cast spells of horrible death and does it for his pleasure 😃 um yes. THE WAY HE CALLED CADENCE A LITTLE QUARTER NOTE AS A PET NAME LIKE- sorry, im jus gonna leave.

anyways idk if u can tell but i havent thought this review through- but, it was a good book. do i recommend it? yes, if ur looking for a short read w a sapphic couple and (hot) evil queens 🤲🏼.

Elizabeth Jones

This novel started well for me. I like the representation in it, LGBTQ characters and polyamorous relationships. Having a system of magic produced by voice and song is pretty cool. 

Unfortunately, about 2/3 through the novel began to feel flat for me. I wasn't heavily invested in the relationship between the two main characters and I didn't get enough information to be invested in the other storyline happening either. I enjoyed Cadence and her character a lot, her struggle with herself and how her powers are being abused. A lot of potential, but it wasn't a satisfactory read for me.

In Julia Ember's dark and lush LGBTQ+ romantic fantasy Ruinsong, two young women from rival factions must work together to reunite their country, as they wrestle with their feelings for each other. Her voice was her prison... Now it’s her weapon. In a world where magic is sung, a powerful mage named Cadence has been forced to torture her country's disgraced nobility at her ruthless queen's bidding. But when she is reunited with her childhood friend, a noblewoman with ties to the underground rebellion, she must finally make a choice: Take a stand to free their country from oppression, or follow in the queen’s footsteps and become a monster herself.

Jennifer

Ruinsong is one of those books that's on my iPad for ages so to fill in some free time yesterday I ended up finishing the whole thing in one sitting. This is a story about taking ownership of one's voice, featuring a decent diversity amongst the characters.

Personally I thought the representation is the bright spot of the book. It's good to see underrepresented individuals featuring in the pages of Ruinsong. It's an opportunity to offer readers a fresh new perspective of seeing the world. Another thing that intrigued me was the central theme about taking ownership of one's personal narratives & knowing one's worth, though I must admit that the overall execution of the ideas was kind of a let down.

While I can see that the central theme floats around throughout Ruinsong, overall the writing didn't particularly work for me: poor pacing / plot, incomplete worldbuilding, and not very likeable characters. My biggest concern is the incoherence coming from weak worldbuilding that leads to shaky storytelling: I wasn't given enough contextual materials to properly patch together Cadence and Remi's characterisations. Because of the underdeveloped storytelling, I didn't feel sold into the promised sapphic enemies to lovers romance at all.

Adding to the grievance is the atrociously crafted villains i.e. Elene and Ren. I think their characterisation just reflects the overly simplistic worldbuilding. I must say that it wasn't hard for me to predict the ending. Overall the plot is just very predictable and generic YA.

To summarise, I think Ruinsong has the potential (good representation which could had been a good opportunity to give some smart twists to the enemies to lovers trope) but overall I thought the writing is poorly executed.

N.B. Content warnings include: emotional blackmail, violence, drowning, abuse, vomiting, weapons, blood mention, and gaslighting

Sahi K

Probably more of a 3.5.

CW: torture

I’ve been very very excited to read Ruinsong since the first time I saw that gorgeous purple cover and to be honest, I didn’t even bother to read the premise in detail. I just knew I needed this book in my life. 

The world the author creates in this book is full of cruelty and fear, and it wasn’t always easy to read. The history of the world, the mythology of the goddesses and the song magic system, the backstory of the current Queen’s ascension and the hierarchy of the people in this world is also described wonderfully without ever feeling like an infodump and I found myself quickly get pulled deep into the story. As someone who loves singing despite being a bad singer myself, I loved the magic system even when it was used in grotesque ways. 

The plot itself wasn’t very complicated - its a straightforward tale of a tyrant queen and a brewing rebellion to overthrow her. This was mostly a character driven story and hence mostly full of inner monologues and conversations, rather than action. This did make the pacing feel quite slow and as if nothing much was happening, but then everything came to a head too quickly towards the end which felt too simple and unrealistic. Otherwise, the writing itself was easy to get through and while I’m not always comfortable diving into a new fantasy world via the audiobook, the narration of this one was very good and I never found it difficult to understand. 

The characters Remy and Cadence are definitely the backbone of this novel. Cadence maybe blessed with powerful magic but what she doesn’t have much is choice in how to exercise it. Her struggle with the tasks that she is assigned and what she is asked to overlook is palpable through the pages, and this theme of how much cruelty one can let go just to ensure one’s survival forms one of the main questions the author asks us through the story. Cadence is a very sympathetic figure and I could really empathize with her fear and her need to heal people after being forced to do horrible things. 

Remy on the other hand maybe part of the nobility that is reviled by the queen, but she still has a slightly privilege life and couldn’t always understand the struggle that Cadence was facing. I ofcourse understood her rage at the cruelties her family and her friends faced at the hands of the queen, but I also thought she was slightly harsh in judging Cadence for her choices at various points in the story. But Remy’s character arc highlights the other main theme of the story - how far will one go and sacrifice for the sake of protecting their family. Even when their friendship deepened and it looked like it was becoming something more, I wasn’t sure there was enough trust between them for a long lasting love. But I still enjoyed their interactions a lot and it’s nice to see more sapphic couples in fantasy. 

To conclude, this was an enjoyable standalone fantasy with a very cool singing magic system and two female characters with their own kinds of strengths, fighting back against an oppressive system. It maybe slow but this story of resilience and standing up to cruelty is definitely worth a read. But don’t mistake this for a romance novel - you’ll get to see the beginnings of a sapphic relationship but that’s not the crux of this story.

cossette

buddy read with robin 🤍 

trigger warnings for: mentions of cancer, child abuse, animal death (the death itself is not on page but the scene of the main character discovering the animal is very graphic), blood, torture, vomiting.

overall, a fast-paced read; highly enjoyable -- i loved the immersive world-building, the magic system & morally grey characters, but i think the romance wasn't developed as strongly. i also don't think it was as POTO-y as i expected, but since i'm not the biggest phantom fan anyways i didn't really mind!

Samantha Bass

First off, I loved the beginning of this book because I knew off the bat that this book was going to have some dark themes and it was going to be pretty gruesome. There are definitely moments where I'm reading and imagining what is going on and actually flinching because it just sounds so horrific. 

This world has magic based on song - you don't have to be a good singer to make the magic work, but our main character Cadence has a voice that is not only beautiful but powerful. She is the strongest mage and can hurt people by singing the proper tune. It's kind of scary. 

Then we have Remi, who's the daughter of a noble family, and currently suffering under the Queen Elene's rule. Elene hates the noble class after her love, who was of a noble rank, basically dumped her and humiliated her. When she took power, she wanted revenge on everyone. And poor Remi and other nobles alike have to participate in this event called the Performance, where all the nobles gather and are tortured by a mage. And if they don't attend, it can mean almost certain death for them and their family. 

That's the starting point for this book. Now, going in, I knew this wasn't going to be a happy book with happy characters. But we're starting off with torture and the struggle between hurting people and living? Yeah, it gets worse. 

But while this book has some gruesome moments, there is a decent plot to it. Cadence is not happy having to torture others for the Elene. And Remi doesn't want to live her life in fear. As children, these two were friends, but after Cadence was taken in to apprentice under the Queen, and Remi was forced to flee with her family out of the palace, the two didn't see each other for years. Once they were reunited though, things are a bit tense, and our plot moves forward. 

One dislike I had for this book was the pacing. The middle was pretty slow and not much was going on. It felt like the author had to add so much filler to the story in order to make it a reasonable length, but I would have much preferred 50 pages to be cut out for a more concise story than having scenes of the same thing over and over again in order to fill up the page. 

And to be honest, Cadence was an annoying character. While I understand that she grew up under a tyrannical ruler and is very traumatized from these experiences, she was just so whiny. I'm sorry, it sounds so mean to put it that way, but she was. And the whininess came more so in the second half of the book. She wants to act so high and mighty, that she only does these bad things because she's told to, but constantly goes against what she says. And then says that she can't do anything against Elene, even though it's clear she's more powerful. 

Remi was a fun character though and I enjoyed her story a lot. I just wished that we got more scenes between the two, because the romance picks up very fast. To be fair, it's clear they had crushes on each other as children, but when they are teens and meet again, there's no love between them. And then BOOM, sudden love and attraction that seemed to come from nowhere. I'm not a fan of that. 

Overall, this book was really interesting. There are definitely torture scenes and it can get a little graphic, and a bit gory, but if you can handle that, then this book was still pretty good! I just wish Cadence wasn't so whiny and that we got a better development of the romance. Either way, definitely check out this book! I think there even might be a sequel? It's hard to tell from the ending.

Hannah

The ending was kindof abrupt and the characters were a bit lacking; however, this was surprisingly dark and had a great magic system and worldbuilding for YA. The writing was pretty straight forward in a way that I enjoy and I loved some of the imagery. It wasn't quite as romance focused as I expected but the romance was very sweet.

Ruinsong

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