Reviews with content warning for Rape - A Strange and Stubborn Endurance

I really thought I was going to love this for about the entire first half, but it just got so boring. I was dying for the story to pick back up again and I kind of ended up tuning out for the last 1/4. I just think it could have been about 100 pages shorter and I would have absolutely loved it.

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lyndsea22's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful mysterious fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

I really enjoyed the main characters, but I feel like the side characters could have been more developed. Also the pacing was intense. I think it would have made more sense if the book took place over a month or so, but it was a week, which felt rushed. I did enjoy the romance and focus on healing, but it was quick for the events that happened for people to have recovered to the point they did. There is an author's note at the beginning warning about the sensitive topics, but the first one is quite early, so it's important to be prepared going in.

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bellyreads's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

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settleforhalf's review against another edition

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hopeful mysterious fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

I'm discouraged to see so much political intrigue hate in other reviews. Finally, a fantasy that imagines a society where queereness of every kind is a welcomed fact of life, thinking logically through how such a society would be organized under archaic primogeniture norms, as well as percieved cross-culturally, and you're complaining? Personally, I enjoyed that part immensely.

That being said, the flowery, info-dumpy, run-on inner monologues and conversations full of paragraph-long replies took a while to get comfortable with.

Velasin and Caethari were a treat and I'm honestly impressed by how lively all the characters were, considering how much sheer plot was squeezed into a week of in-book time. Take this as the double-edged comment I'm intending it to be. We truly didn't get one moment of rest from the first chapter to the very last. Fast pacing is all well and good, but this was edging on too much. I didn't even try to guess who the culprit was... there was no time to dwell on any hints before Velasin chewed up and regurgirated them for me to swallow, anyway.

Complaints aside, I had a solid time reading this and, though I don't mind leaving it as a standalone in my brain, I may yet come back for the sequel.

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pixelateddragon's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.25

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. The characters and the world building were interesting and well-written, and the voice acting in the audio book was absolutely amazing.
I loved the contrast of the queer-normative country with the more typically "medieval European"-esque one and how this was expressed and talked about in the text. (Loved the nonbinary representation btw!)
I knocked off a few points for how graphic the

sexual assault

was, I won't say it's existence wasn't important to further the conflict of the story but I felt it was in more detail than it needed to be to get the point across. Mind the trigger warnings!!!
And the plot was relatively interesting but a bit predictable, I guessed the twist pretty much as soon as the first attack happened & the MC was introduced to

the ML's sisters & the inheritance situation

but it wasn't disappointing.
I loved the relationships between characters especially the platonic & familial ones, they were dynamic and felt so real.
I ended up skipping the sex scenes so I can't really comment on them, because they always ended up playing when I was trying to eat in public (and I didn't bother to go back to them because I'm not terribly fond of having sex narrated to me in general 😅).

But overall the book was pretty enjoyable with a dynamic and rich world and characters with beautiful prose & audio narration but, it was a bit heavy handed and more explicit than needed with a few of the more 'traumatic' parts of the story (& the relationship was a bit rushed, but it's a romance book and that is typical of the genre so I can't complain too much on that), and the mystery was a bit predictable.

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sardonisms's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.75

This is a very, very good book. I picked it up because I love fantasy political drama and I was looking for queer romantasy. It did not disappoint. The plot keeps moving so that a 500+ page book still feels like a fast read. Foz Meadows is ruthless in their pacing, methodically alternating low and high tension to give both the plot and characters space to develop and flourish. The characters are all distinctive and shine with personality, even if they appear only for one scene. Any of them feel like they could pick up the mantle and tell a compelling story in their own right. The reveal, when it comes, hits like a truck, and makes a horrible sense the more is unraveled. There's one piece of it that I'm not sure had a foundation laid previously in the book, but I may have missed it, because I definitely did completely skate over another piece of the puzzle that was casually dropped earlier.

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