About

The Lord of Stariel is the first book in the Stariel series written by A.J. Lancaster.

The Lord of Stariel book cover

Blurb

The Lord of Stariel is dead. Long live the Lord of Stariel. Whoever that is.

Everyone knows who the magical estate will choose for its next ruler. Or do they?

Will it be the lord’s eldest son, who he despised?

His favourite nephew, with the strongest magical land-sense?

His scandalous daughter, who ran away from home years ago to study illusion?

But whoever Stariel chooses will have bigger problems than eccentric relatives to deal with.

Winged, beautifully deadly problems.

For the first time in centuries, the fae are returning to the Mortal Realm, and only the Lord of Stariel can keep the estate safe.

In theory.

Review

I'm not sure if my strategy of giving a few days break between reading books is paying off or lucky with my selections in the last few months. I've been using the term fast paced often while writing reviews, so much so that I've started to doubt if I'm using it badly.

Anyway, I finished this book in less than a day. I had expected to read a chapter or so while taking break from work. I didn't get much work done.

The opening chapter was interesting and I made a few obvious guesses right away. While some of them came true, I was glad to see the twists that came later. And this also applied to the characters. Like the overbearing Aunt (a trope I hate), who was indeed unlikeable but there was more to her character.

The plot was mostly slice-of-life, which is one of my favorite subgenre these days. The series itself seems to be moving towards larger stakes though. Some of the slice-of-life pay-offs I had been expecting didn't materialize in this book. I'm hoping they'll be in the sequels even if the plot goes big.

The mystery portion of the book started about a quarter way in, which was one of the twists I didn't see coming. I did manage to guess the culprit about halfway through, but I think that was fairly obvious. Also, I feel the whodunnit aspect wasn't really that important compared to what the author seems to have planned for the series. Magic plays a role too, including a few cool scenes at the end.

Overall, I'd highly recommend the book for those who enjoy well written characters in a fantasy-of-manners setting. There's also a blog post by the author listing 15 fantasy-of-manners books with mini-reviews and other details.

My rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟☆

What others are saying

From Hélène Louise's review on goodreads:

"Lord of Stariel" is just the kind of family story I love, a mix of fantasy, feminism, romance and humour, a mix of levity and profoundness: subtle but never simplistic. A very feminine read (and I don't mean "for girls"), which will delight readers who appreciate a classic style, beautiful and smart dialogues and an absence of clichés - or rather the presence of twisted ones!

From Olivia Atwater's review on goodreads:

I deeply enjoyed The Lord of Stariel the first time I read it, and it holds up wonderfully on a second read-through! It's a book with all of my favourite elements: an enjoyable female main character, a bit of magical intrigue, a solid romantic interest, and—most importantly—faeries.

Bingo

/r/Fantasy/ 2022 bingo categories:

  • Book Club OR Readalong Book
  • Author Uses Initials
  • Self-Published OR Indie Publisher
  • Shapeshifters (HM)
    • doesn't feature prominently in this book though
  • Family Matters (HM)