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lightreadsBetrothed to the Emperor and Emperor's Wrath
2/5. M/M fantasy romance about the royal twins raised to kill the emperor of the encroaching empire, except when they are presented, the emperor chooses the brother to marry, not the sister as planned. And then stuff happens.
I got sucked in based on the trope set, even though I knew damn well this was not going to satisfy. And I was right. There’s something extra frustrating about someone doing tropes you’re into, but with such limited skill that nothing really lands. Here, for example – the books are trying to do fake/pretend relationship but whoops it’s also real, but they’re so incoherent about it and so impatient to get to the porn that I couldn’t keep track from one scene to the next whether we were treating it as real or not. These books also do that thing where our first person narrator totally misses that the guy is into him, but it’s done so clumsily here that it just makes him look incredibly, pathologically stupid.
/cranky
2/5. M/M fantasy romance about the royal twins raised to kill the emperor of the encroaching empire, except when they are presented, the emperor chooses the brother to marry, not the sister as planned. And then stuff happens.
I got sucked in based on the trope set, even though I knew damn well this was not going to satisfy. And I was right. There’s something extra frustrating about someone doing tropes you’re into, but with such limited skill that nothing really lands. Here, for example – the books are trying to do fake/pretend relationship but whoops it’s also real, but they’re so incoherent about it and so impatient to get to the porn that I couldn’t keep track from one scene to the next whether we were treating it as real or not. These books also do that thing where our first person narrator totally misses that the guy is into him, but it’s done so clumsily here that it just makes him look incredibly, pathologically stupid.
/cranky
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Date: 2025-09-27 10:54 am (UTC)