Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars.
Read From: July 25th to 31st, 2015. Kindle e-ARC.
This was a lovely fantasy book set in Regency England. It wonderfully explored things like racism, class society in England, and Malaysian vampires in a quirky, oft-times brilliant way.
I loved the writing. I'm normally not into Regency literature, but since so much was talked about this book doing new things, I decided to give it a spin. The hype is well deserved. The lead protagonists, both people of colour are fun to read. And even though this is set in early 19th Century the writing is perfectly accessible and full of snark, without it feeling shoe-horned or out of place.
Zen Cho does a great job of integrating quite a bit of the outside world, including a supernatural one full of faeries. I always find Regency literature to be so full of itself, narrowly focussing on upper class Britain as though it were a perfectly self-contained unit, completely managing to ignore the massive wars the British were fighting all over the world. The Sorcerer to the Crown does not fall into this trap. Neither the romance, nor the magic overwhelms the book at all, there is just the right amount of both so that you can enjoy them, and combined with the great characters, Regency manners, this is a cracking read. And did I mention the Malaysian female vampyres?
I can't really find anything to criticize in this book at all. It's a bonus we'll have two more books in this series coming out, I can't wait to find out what Zen Cho does from here.
All in all, I'll have no problems recommending this book looking for a nice read, even if you are not into Regency literature, or fantasy for that matter.
Full Disclosure: I got an ARC of this book from the publisher in exchange for a review.
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