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Book: “Mountain Made of Glass” by Scarlett St. Clair
Publishing Info: Sourcebooks Bloom Books, March 2023
Where Did I Get this Book: from the publisher!
Where Can You Get this Book: WorldCat.org | Amazon | IndieBound
Book Description: All Gesela’s life, her home village of Elk has been cursed. And it isn’t a single curse—it is one after another, each to be broken by a villager, each with devastating consequences. When Elk’s well goes dry, it is Gesela’s turn to save her town by killing the toad that lives at the bottom. Except… the toad is not a toad at all. He is an Elven prince under a curse of his own, and upon his death, his brothers come for Gesela, seeking retribution.
As punishment, the princes banish Gesela to live with their seventh brother, the one they call the beast. Gesela expects to be the prisoner of a hideous monster, but the beast turns out to be exquisitely beautiful, and rather than lock her in a cell, he offers Gesela a deal. If she can guess his true name in seven days, she can go free.
Gesela agrees, but there is a hidden catch—she must speak his name with love in order to free him, too.
But can either of them learn to love in time?
Review: Scarlett St. Clair is a powerhouse of a romantasy writer. She’s prolific and beloved, and I hadn’t read anything by her up to this point. So I was excited to check this book out when I was approached by the publisher for a potential review. I won’t lie, I was especially excited to check out a novella and one that is pulling from various fairytales. I best know St. Clair through references to her “Hades and Persephone” series, and that’s a tough one to get right, so I felt more confident with a fairytale re-telling as an initial entry point to this author’s work.
After now reading this book, I feel like I’m just as unclear on whether or not St. Clair’s books are for me or not. That said, I can now easily understand the appeal for many romantasy fans. Let’s start with that part. Right away, the style of writing appealed to me. There was a nice balance between quick pacing and descriptive prose. The author had clearly read a bunch of fairytales and had no problem capturing the correct tone, writing a story that felt both whimsical and beautiful at times, and violent and disturbing at others. I especially liked just how many fairytale sources were all drawn upon to craft this story. The author even included a note with more details on all of the points of inspiration she pulled upon when writing this book, which I found fascinating.
I also really enjoyed the dialogue and much of the inner monologues we saw from both the hero and the heroine. And while I enjoyed Gesela, Casamir’s chapters turned out to be the most fun. There were a bunch of side characters with whom he interacted, and I loved the ridiculousness of their scenes attempting to point out to their great Fae lord just how inept his attempts at wooing Gesala really were. There was also a captured fairytale prince whose own story veered off into some truly surprising directions.
However, almost from the very start, I struggled with the balance being struck here between plot and spicy scenes. In that…there really was no balance and it was predominantly the latter. No judgement, of course, to readers who are happy with books that lean more in this direction, but for me, I still have fairly high expectations as far as plot goes for my romantasy books. I still want a story, you see. And while yes, there was one here, it was sometimes hard to keep sight of it through all of the insta-lust we had going on.
I was especially put off when, during the very first scene between Gesala and Casamir, we have Gesala completely losing her wits and falling into immediate lust over this complete stranger. And not just “oh, he’s good looking” lust, we’re talking “let’s jump in bed now!” lust. From there, I felt like there were numerous moments where any of the tension or build to the actual love story were undercut by these moments of straight spice. And at a certain point, it became so comical how often Gesala was ending up in contrived situations where she was naked that I started counting. Which really isn’t what I want from a story: to be so distracted by some sort of silliness that I start counting.
I’m not quite sure where to go from here. Reading between all of the spicy scenes, there was a lot to like about this book. I thought the characterization was great, the dialogue was witty and often hilarious, and the fairytale inspiration was spot on. I just didn’t like how much the spicy scenes seemed to overshadow any actual story that was being drawn. The author’s note said she plans on writing stories for all of the other Fae brothers, so maybe I’ll check out the next one of those and go from there. That said, if you enjoy romantasy books with insta-lust/lots of spice, this may be for you. But if you’re looking for more story or plotting to hold things together, this one is on the weaker side.
Rating 7: A bit of a hit or miss reading experience, I really enjoyed the story we had here, but unfortunately the plot often fell to the wayside in lieu of romance scenes.
Reader’s Advisory:
“Mountains Made of Glass” can be found on these Goodreads lists: Romantasy for Adults and Epic High Fantasy/Romance/Mythology in 2023
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