Reviews with content warning for Violence - Silver Wings Golden Games

I love this series. The drama and tension is delicious and the MMC is perfection.

Despite characters seeming to do nothing with crucial information they uncover through the course of the book, the story moves along and resolves just about everything. There were at least two plot holes that disappointed me, but they were minor in the end and the book was still enough fun to devour in a day.

Definitely recommend this series.

Content Warnings

tigerbeam's review against another edition

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tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

1.75

Sabine is great. She is soft and strong in her weakness and wields her softness like a sword. She is all things a powerful woman is, including fallible in her feelings for a certain fuckboy "hero" whom I am convinced is a red herring in Sabine's growth arc.

It's not badly written, the author writes well enough and is able to craft characters and the plot well enough but it's the decisions she's making through characters that is making me distrustful of her intentions for them (or this genre in general). Like, what message is she trying to send? Is this just a wish fulfillment story or is it actually trying to be interesting and resonant?

I get it, the beast-like hero is a thing for many readers. It has its appeal but right now, this book has lost me on its romance entirely, which fuels the entire story. It's trying to convince me that their relationship is romantic and it's not. It's triggering. There are many beast-like MMCs (see Beauty and the Beast? lmao) who aren't gaslighting, boundary invading epitomes of toxic masculinity. Wolf isn't beast-like, there is nothing wild and innocent in his feelings, his mannerisms. Wolf is a fuckboy.

His depiction is a sublimation of all the things that men do to women who treat women as chattel. He doesn't just f*ck her and pine for her. He wants to OWN her. This is the glaring hole in Marceau's understanding of beast-men tropes. Animals are territorial but don't exert ownership, they don't "give away" their mates and they certainly don't intentionally gaslight people with emotional blackmail in order to mess with them psychologically. He strips Sabine of her agency constantly (constantly being in her space, even when she's trying to get away- trying to protect her by physically overwhelming her). He does not respect her boundaries, even when she is visibly distressed (wanting to jerk off to her sleeping form after he sneaks into her room? cringe). He uses her softness against her by gaslighting her (forcing her to admit that she thinks about Wolf when she's intimate with Rian after she gives into her feelings for Wolf? like no, bruh. AND THEN TELLING SABINE "I don't know how to love!!!!!" LOL.)

By the second time they were f*cking, I understood their relationship to be some sort of wish fulfillment fantasy and I had fully divested from this nonsense romance.

I have no qualms against cheating stories but somehow their romance is also sanctimonious all the same. This is the nail on the coffin. It's not an interesting story about two shitty people deserving each other, it's about them not taking accountability for their actions because they're pretty and hot or some sh*t. Sabine f*cking Wolf behind Rian's back is not an issue for me, but I just want her to come into it (literally and figuratively). I don't want sex scenes with her as the Virgin Mary, her being elevated into a goddess when she's literally no better than Wolf. Like, lets just have her fall to her own animal instincts and see how much better she gets as a character?

The reason why I continue reading is because of Rian. He is supposed to be an aspect of the trickster trope, but thus far, he's been forthcoming about his faults, he delivers on his promises and does not treat Sabine like chattel. He didn't even buy her, technically and I thought this was intention on Marceau's part, to even the power dynamics between Sabine and Rian. I keep reading because Marceau can seemingly address toxic behavior by making her characters "think" about it, but ultimately the decisions they make are unrelated to what they think, so my patience keeps thinning out with each f*ck session, every "Valveres are horrible people they deserve every horrible thing they get" and every other "oh shit Rian caught us" panic attack.

I know that books don't make money if their heroines are rogue actors but for me, the only way I can see myself enjoying this book is if Sabine doesn't end up with anybody and simply becomes some sort of forest entity. Depending on how I feel about Sabine x Wolf by the end of the book, I may or may not finish this series because I do not intend to put myself through anymore eye rolling at lengthy depictions of "beast man's" c0*k.

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