Master of One review

[lunasariel]

I'm about to dive headfirst into a syncread of Everina Maxwell's Winter's Orbit with hamsterwoman, ikel89, and cyanshadow (plus a few other people, I expect) (syncread post here, for my own reference), but before I immerse myself in Space Gays, I thought I'd get down my thoughts on my latest batch of Fantasy Gays, to make sure I do them justice. :D

Master of One, by Jaida Jones and Dani Bennett, was another one I came across at work. It seemed to be a mildly entertaining popcorn read - a YA fantasy heist with a soupcon of queer romance. The professional reviews were good and there were no holds, so I thought, "why not?"

Hoo boy.

Maybe it was because I was coming off of a losing streak (To Sleep in a Sea of Stars shaded from Actually Bad to He's Trying, and Shadows Rising never rose beyond the level of middling fanfic) so anything even marginally good would spark joy, or maybe it was just a right place, right time thing. I'm not sure what it was, but I fell HARD for this book. Like, reading it was such an experience of pure and utter joy like I haven't felt in *years*. I've certainly read better books recently, but none that were as *fun*. This is exactly what would happen if you told Scott Lynch to re-write Six of Crows but Make It Queer. All of the delicious fantasy heist elements, snappy dialogue, creative swearing, and magnetic characters, with much less Teen Angst and virtually no meandering flashbacks.

The weird thing here is, normally I'm not the biggest YA fan, and I acknowledge that there were problems with this book (why was Shining Talon suddenly terrified of a spoon? Why didn't Morien kidnap Inis' family as insurance right off the bat? Where the actual fuck did Laisrean get a massive piece of magic sorcerer-repelling cloth?), but you know what? I didn't care. I, who normally nitpick and worry things to death, and for whom minor character or plot flaws mean that something is Ruined Forever. I enjoyed every second of this book, nonsense plot points and Character Beats As The Plot Demands and all.

I've thought a lot about why this is, and I've come to the conclusion that the authors and I have a 1:1 id match. Every ridiculous trope I love was on full display here, and it's abundantly clear that the authors love them exactly as much as I do. Let's count:

• Beautiful stalwart honorable faerie knight who Will Not Allow an Injustice to Stand and Will Die For His Friends (who is also a Temporal Fish Out of Water! and a memetic badass!)


• Smartass motor-mouthed Inteverate Schemer and Master Thief who was born over-caffeinated and would spit in a god's eye if it meant he could pick their pocket and Does Not Need Friends, Thank You Very Much


• Very Fine Lady who is also Very Angry and can/will kill you with a grapefruit spoon


• Gentle & kind-hearted doe-eyed boy with Very Delicate Health who couldn't at all be the mastermind behind any sort of plot. Because he's Very Ill, you see. *kaff*kaff* (That said, he is actually a total sweetie and would much prefer that people just be nice to each other and stop shouting, please)


• Honorable sad ex-knight with a Tragic Past


• Seeming cheerful rich dumbass is secretly Robin Hood


• Scrappy actress who will kick your ass if you ruin her scene or get blood on her dress


• Soul-bonded magic animals


• Found Family/Get the Gang Together


• Dissolute drunkard Ravenclaw genius with a secret heart of gold (which is aimed firmly at the aforementioned doe-eyed schemer)


• EEEEEEEVIL Sorcerer of Evil. He's so evil, you guys. Like, the evilest. He gloats. He has an Evil Laugh. He can disappear in a swirl of red robes. He quite possibly has no skin. He can give people Evil Mirror Nightmares.


• Deadly Decadent Court with beautiful clothes and lots of shinies With A Dagger Behind Every Smile(TM)


• Magical faerie nonsense all over the place


• Traps! Puzzles! Mazes! Plots! Schemes!


• Evil immortal empress who has Gone Mad


• Overly Literal Humor


• Thrillin' heroics up the wazoo


• I Will Die For My Friends (but then doesn't actually die)


• La Resistance


• Oh Ho He's(/She's) Hot


• Fealty Kink


• Battle Couple


• Don't You Dare Touch My Friends and/or Beloved (aka Mutual Defense Pact)

And then some stuff I didn't even know I was into! Like, I've always been thoroughly *eyeroll* at excessively bickery/Slap Slap Kiss Kiss couples, but Rags' (the aforementioned motor-mouthed Master Thief) and Shining Talon's (the aforementioned beautiful stalwart honorable faerie knight) routine just never got old for me. The premise is, roughly, that Rags was "hired" (read: set up and kidnapped) by Morien the Last (aforementioned EEEEEEEVIL Sorcerer of Evil) to break into an ancient fae stronghold to retrieve a "treasure," but it turns out this treasure was Shining Talon of Vengeance Drawn in Westward Strike (Shiny or Tal for most of the book), the (presumed) last of the fae, who has been in an enchanted sleep for the past few centuries, and who holds the first key to forming the Ultimate Magical MacGuffin, the Paragon. The Paragon was split into seven pieces that took the form of innocuous pieces of silver, and are strewn about the world, dormant, waiting for their destined soul-bonded masters to awaken them. Hilarity ensues as Rags and Tal, slowly joined by the other Masters, some of whom manage to locate their pieces of enchanted silver (variously disguised as part of a river, a set of family silverware, a carousel, and a bunch of swords), all while under the baleful eye of Morien and his slowly-revealed-to-be-unwilling ally, Faolan (the aforementioned dissolute genius). And of course there's a La Resistance against the Evil Empress, which our heroes join upon the various revelations that Queen Catriona has fucked up all their lives in various ways.

Oops, I was talking about Rags and Tal. I was surprised at how hard I shipped them, but Rags' perplexed attitude of "honestly, this is r u d e, how dare you be this hot, and this noble, and care about me this much, and protect me from the Evil Sorcerer, and like actually care about what I think, and what was I saying?" XD XD XD Like, every time he Notices something about Tal, who is indeed tall and muscular and golden-skinned with cool tattoos and skunk stripe black-and-white hair, and who devoted himself to Rags when Rags saved him from his enchanted sleep, his first thought is "honestly how dare you," and I Adore Them.

Of course, Rags moves from "honestly how dare you" to realizing a couple of things about why he shuts people out, and slowly starts to get closer to Tal, as well as to protect him from Morien, which is exactly the sort of Mutual Defense Pact that I love - Rags lets loose his innate "nice bird, asshole" chaotic tendencies to distract Morien from using his evil sorcery on Tal, and Tal physically protects Rags when Morien unleashes a storm of evil mirror glass on him as punishment for said chaotic tendencies. I, just, I dunno why this "I will protect you"/"No, I will protect you" thing gets me right in the heart, but it does. Every time.

I was afraid the book would end on an emotional cliffhanger, since the climax involved Rags using an oath Tal swore early in the book to compel him to do something he really really REALLY didn't want to do (but it was For His Own Good!), and Tal, who was usually super cuddly (in a Reserved and Noble way, of course) towards Rags, suddenly started acting v. distant. I was surprised by how much this hurt - I knew I was having a hell of a lot of fun with these characters, but I don't think I realized quite how invested I was up until this point, when I realized this was a series opener, so not all of the problems would necessarily be quickly resolved, and I was honestly just about climbing the walls at the thought of Tal being wounded and distant to Rags, just when Rags had learned to open up and let him in, for YEARS until the next book came out. ...But then they resolved at least this thread at the end, and it turns out Tal wasn't mad at Rags, but mad at himself for "forgetting himself" to the point where Rags had to compel him in a way that was clearly repugnant to him (Rags) in order to save his (Tal's) life. And then they kissed the way I'd been waiting for them to do since like a third of the way through the book. <3

After that, however, I was surprised but extremely pleased to see that they were taking the mature but difficult route - because Rags has the power to compel Tal (Tal has essentially accepted Rags as his liege lord for the time being), Rags is Super Uncomfortable with kissing someone who theoretically wouldn't be able to refuse if he wanted to, and asked to put their relationship on hold until their formal liege lord/vassal relationship is dissolved. Tal very much does not want to refuse, and apparently the fae are SUPER into fealty kink, so at first he was a bit ??? about why he and Rags were not continuing with this whole kissing business, but eventually settled for "okay, fine, it's a Human Thing that consent has to be freely given outside of formal power dynamics, I GUESS, but as soon as we find all of the MacGuffins we are *definitely* making up for lost time." And Rags was :DDD, and I was :DDD.

Oh, and did I mention that they're a Battle Couple, in a very "fighter and rogue" way, with all of the post-battle healing/"don't you dare die on me"/"don't you fucking dare touch him" that this entails? :DDD

I think Battle Couples might be as much of a thing for the authors as it is for me, because now that I think about it, all of the confirmed or implied couples fit into that dynamic!

Inis (the aforementioned Very Fine Lady) and Laisrean (the aforementioned deceptively cheerful rich dumbass) were Childhood Friends, who were split up by the death of Inis' family, when they were revealed to be working with La Resistance, and got back together over the course of the novel. I love how implacably furious Inis is (for any of my fellow Animorphs readers, she's extremely Rachel), and how that pairs with her perplexed, mildly alarmed "oh no, my dead brother's best friend grew up to be really hot??? And he's A Hero To The People??? And his stupidly heroic ass needs rescuing??? What do???" Laisrean, too, had a wonderful "oh no, my dead best friend/revolutionary compatriot's sister turned out to be really hot and angry and into overthrowing the corrupt monarchy halp I cannot handle this" realization. And then they were Back to Back Badasses. :D

Similarly, Cabhan (the aforementioned tragic ex-knight) and Einan (the aforementioned scrappy actress) develop a Suspiciously Close Relationship while sneaking around in sewers, evading guard patrols, breaking people out of prison - you know, fun date night stuff. I was surprised but very pleased to find out that my initial inkling that Einan was trans turned out to be accurate. At first, I thought they were going for the plausible deniability "maybe she is, maybe she isn't, interpret it how you want ;)" thing (maybe I'd been burned too recently by Shadows Rising, lol), but nope, turns out it was all deliberate foreshadowing! :D I'm reminded of Noelle Stevenson on writing She-Ra - "when we write trans characters, we will make it clear that this is who they are." Cab and Einan's relationship is very "hold my flower, baby"/"I got yo flower," and I love it, and them.

I think Somhairle (the aforementioned Very Ill scheming sweetie) and Faolan (the aforementioned dissolute genius) might also qualify as a Battle Couple, even though they're both more Guile Heroes. Granted, it's more along the lines of "Somhairle distrusts Faolan as Morien's ally/knowledge bank, but gradually realizes that Faolan is being controlled through a shard of evil magic glass through his heart and is doing his best to thwart Morien, and decised to help him out"/"Faolan sees himself as a Cold Heartless Bastard out of necessity but then tiny sunshine man shows up and Oh No Feelings," so it's much more about misdirection/passing along strategic pieces of information/mutual nerding out over fae history (they are both such fucking nerds, omg). But they definitely do have a Mutual Protection Pact thing going on, wherein Faolan manages to convince Morien that Somhairle is Far Too Ill for Morien to give him the shard-of-glass-through-the-heart treatment, and generally protects him from Morien's wrath by redirecting it onto himself, while Somhairle uses the time Faolan has bought him to figure out how to mitigate the shard-of-glass issue and generally provides "I see who you really are and I think you're awesome <3" support. Unlike the ships mentioned above, this one hasn't been confirmed, but their behavior is extremely shippy, so I'm counting it. :D

Oh man, and I haven't even gotten into the Vive La Revolution aspect, or the fact that the fragments of the Paragon turn into magical silver animals that soul-bond with their human partners, or Inis and Rags' "I smack you across the head and call you a dumbass because you're one of my best friends, ya dork" friendship, or Somhairle's very Hufflepuff scheming, or Cab and Tal's whole Brother Warriors schtick, or the whole Found Family dynamic as they try to stick together and free themselves and sundry other prisoners from Morien's control, and, and, and!!!

Suffice to say, I liked this book A Lot.

Like, I don't even care that Shining Talon is suddenly terrified of a spoon because fae are Bad With Iron (who TF makes a spoon out of pig iron??? And how did he manage to get through the door, if the nails and/or handle were also presumably iron?), or that the family naming conventions are ridiculous (the convention is the prefix Ever-, and then a Very Obvious Trait; e.g. the Ever-Loyal family is all super loyal, the Ever-Learning family is all super smart, the Ever-Bright family is the family of quasi-immortal rulers who surround themselves with mirrors and the color white, etc.), or the fact that the names were all very very vaguely Irish-flavored but not anything direct (for example, "comhairle" means "advice," and...I guess Somhairle does give good advice? Kinda? Sometimes?), or the fact that the title makes no sense (Cab is Master of One, not Rags, and Rags is the first and most consistent POV character). And I was even OK with the "oh no, a child is in danger!!!" portion of the climax, because most of the kids had actual personalities, rather than just being child-shaped cardboard cutouts with "You Should Care About This" written on them. And Tal's despair and fury when he realized he couldn't save all of them, and Rags' choice to force Tal to escape, was actually heartbreaking.

So, yeah, I'm not sure what confluence of events & brainspace led to this being The Exact Perfect Book at The Exact Perfect Time, but I adored it the way I haven't wholeheartedly adored anything in a long time. It was sometimes ridiculous, it was sometimes messy, and it was *glorious*.

TL;DR: I'm not sure I'm qualified to write an objective review on Jaida Jones and Dani Bennett's Master of One, because it apparently reaches deep into my id and presses every trope button I've got. It's occasionally a bit silly, but I'm afloat on a sea of Found Family/Battle Couple/honorable faerie knights/smartass Master Thieves/good queer representation/badass ladies/schemes/etc./etc./etc. I loved it wholeheartedly and I Cannot Fucking Wait for the sequel it's clearly setting up. :DDD