The Foxglove King – Review

I finally understand the adage about not judging a book by its cover

Don’t judge me too harshly here – In my defense, the cover is extraordinarily pretty, plus the blurb made it sound like this was a story that ticked a ton of boxes for me – magic, fantasy, mystery, romance, etc. The general review consensus also seemed to think this one was leagues better than her “For the Wolf” duology, which I have downloaded on my Kindle but have not quite gotten around to reading yet. I don’t think my reaction to this book will stop me reading them, though I might be more liberal about finishing them if it’s just not doing it for me.

This book had so much promise, and the bones of a great story are there for sure, but the execution was endlessly frustrating for me.

Speaking of bones, the magic system is the bones of any good fantasy story, and the blurb makes (should we not be judging books by their blurbs now, too?) it sound so awesome and really unique, but in truth it’s just a fucking mess. The idea of death/life magic from fallen gods is pretty interesting, and not something I’ve encountered much in my extensive fantasy reading background, but the idea is squandered because I don’t think I ever had the impression that Whitten had a firm grasp on it. Dare I say it was as hard to get a hold of as Mortem seems to be for our main character? That point might be too clever by half, but it was true for me regardless, because I never really understood what was going on most of the time.

Mortem (death) magic comes from the dead goddess Nyxara, and only people who have had near-death experiences are able to wield/channel it. It lives inside everyone though, and can be used even by those that aren’t able to channel by bringing themselves close to death with poison…..I think? I also think that’s where the foxglove in the title comes from, though I’m not 100% clear on that because I’m pretty sure the only time in the entire book foxglove is actually mentioned is when Lore, our MC, dresses up as it for one of the 47 balls she attends over the course of the book.

Spiritum, in contrast, is life magic and can only be wielded by the chosen of the god Apollius, also dead, and the chosen are only from the royal bloodline. I don’t really know what spiritum does, other than that it’s rare and it kind of seems to be life-force itself? I can’t get beyond that because it’s just not explained well.

Lore is a poison runner, but more importantly she’s born with the ability to channel Mortem, no near-death required. This makes her SPECIAL. She is also SPECIAL because she is curvy, but curvy in the right places (i.e. boobs and ass). We know this because it’s mentioned several times that she is boobier than your average court strumpet.

She winds up among these average court strumpets when she’s tasked with pretending to be nobility along with an erstwhile death monk as part of a plot to uncover treason supposedly being committed by the king’s son. So within a few chapters we’ve got quite a few standard, albeit interesting, tropes set up – opposites attract (Lore is a boobilicious SPECIAL woman comfortable with her own sexuality, paired with our death monk), forced proximity (they are posing as cousins), and a mystery centering on political treason. Sprinkle some magic in and you have a recipe for almost any book on the YA bestseller list these days. That’s not an insult, by the way, because I glut myself on books like this on the regular. There’s nothing wrong with being formulaic if you do it well. I just feel like a few key ingredients were left out here.

Oh, and I can’t forget that eventually a love triangle is introduced, and lo and behold, the third side of this triangle is the aformentioned possibly treasonous bisexual manwhore prince (why are bisexual characters in books like these always promiscuous?) who is also the heir to the Spiritum magic stuff of his bloodline, aka, chosen of the gods. I’m not revealing anything here, though I’m pretty sure the author meant it to come off as a lot more surprising than it actually was, by failing to use the word “Spiritum” when talking about the odd golden magic glow or whatever that always appeared around the manwhore prince whenever our heroine used her spooky black smoke powers. Speaking of all this, I hate when authors go to the lengths of creating street-smart worldly, powerful, SPECIAL characters like Lore and then make them so stupid that they can’t even see what’s so obvious to the reader. I was screaming “Spiritum” so much every time Bastian the manwhore prince’s hands glowed that I think my husband thought I was chanting in Latin or something.

This leads to perhaps one of my biggest problems with this book – Spiritum and Mortem are set up to be two opposing magical forces, and it’s stated pretty clearly in the first half of the book that Lore has real difficulties using her powers around Bastian, which is probably one of the bigger tipoffs you’ll get that he is the heir to Spiritum….and that makes sense, actually, because life and death are opposing forces and it throws a pretty cool angle into the whole love triangle thing. Sometime in the latter half of the book though, Lore suddenly has no difficulty using her magic around Bastian, and it’s eventually revealed that the two actually strengthen each other. I have no problem with that perspective either, except Whitten seemed to make Lore’s inability to use her magic around Bastian obvious enough that it was supposed to be significant, yet then dismantles that idea later on.

I’m not sure if the above was conscious on her part, or just another example of an author forgetting aspects of their own mythology. Either way it didn’t work for me, and was enough of a thorn in my brain that it destroyed any chance of me coming around on this book at the end when I spent the better part of its almost 600 pages really fucking confused.

So yeah, this book is a lot of things – it’s a fantasy, it’s a story of court intrigue and political drama, it’s a magical love triangle, but the one thing it wasn’t was cohesive and linear in the sense that I knew where point A and Point B is, but not everything that lay in between. And sure, it’s formulaic, but it’s out of place in spite of its predictability, because in contrast to the hundreds of other books that also follow this near exact recipe for fantasy romantic intrigue, it’s carried out so haphazardly that even though you can see the ending miles away, you have no idea how you got there.