Tempest (The Lyrian Sea, #1)
About the book
Author: Victoria Aveyard
Publisher: Harper Voyager
More info:
The StoryGraph | Goodreads
Note: Content and trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the review.
Buy and support indie bookstores (+ I earn a small commission):
Bookshop.org (print or ebook) | Libro.fm (audio)
My review
There’s a ton of buzz about this pirate fantasy novel, Victoria Aveyard’s first book for adults after her YA hits like the Red Queen series. And here’s the thing about me: I’m always down for pirates + fantasy. For personal taste reasons this was a like, not a love, BUT it’s definitely setting up a sequel that could be much more aligned with what I like in a book, and I had a fun time nonetheless.
Tempest is told in alternating timelines: “after,” in which the main character, Cat, a tavern owner on an island in the Lyrian Sea, is dealing with the fallout of the Imperial Navy’s defeat of the Pirate Republic; and “before,” in which she first arrived in the Lyrian Sea as the newly married Lady to an obnoxious, petty Lord. In the before, Cat’s ship is raided by a pirate ship containing a certain man named Valerian Kane with eyes the color of a tempest. In the after, we learn that they did not remain strangers long.
Aveyard originally intended to publish this duology as a single, long standalone, but when it turned out to be 1,000 pages long, they split it into two books. This is definitely the source of my frustrations, which are not necessarily flaws in the book, but just not aligned with what I most enjoy. First of all, there is very little actual magic or fantasy until very late in the book, so I spent most of the novel wondering when it would appear. (We are set up for a magical sequel, however!) Second, in the “after,” Cat and Valerian are not only separated but estranged. As an OTP girlie, I just don’t have as much fun when mom and dad are fighting! I think she is setting up an interesting lovers-to-enemies-to-lovers thing for the sequel, but in this book I was just impatient. And finally, I think she used the word “tempest” about 50 times in this book, which obviously snagged my attention more than usual because it’s the title of the book, and it started to feel quite heavy-handed.
But even with those qualms, I had a very fun time reading this book. Cat is deliciously morally gray, Valerian is literally perfect, and the alternating timelines kept the pace moving nice and quickly. I’m very intrigued by the magic and romance promised to come! (Just be advised that despite the fact that people are going to call this a romantasy, it is quite the slow burn.)
Now to wait until the rest of this book the sequel (excitingly titled Tyrant) comes out next year!
Content and trigger warnings
Violence, blood, death
Suicidal thoughts (minor)
