Review: The Conqueror’s Princess

Hi all, I’ve got some lovely and basic Irish Breakfast tea today. After the Chaos of Thanksgiving I just needed something simple. Today we are going to be talking about The Conqueror’s Princess by Jeanette Rose and Alice Callisto

eARC kindly provided by Netgalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

The Conqueror’s Princess is Book One in the Princesses of Aellolyn series by Alice Callisto and Jeanette Rose. This book follows Charlie, the Crown Princess and Evan a slave that has gathered an army of men that he has freed and is liberating slaves across the kingdoms. He invades Candonia and instead of murdering all of the royals like he has done previously he forces Charlie to marry him.

Charlie has been given a lot of freedom growing up, and while her stepmother is not the nicest person, to put it mildly, her Father dotes on her. Unbeknownst to Evan she has already freed all of the slaves in Aellolyn a couple of years prior to his conquering.

The forced marriage trope is one of my favorites, when done right and the people involved don’t lose all agency. And Callisto and Rose did that so well in this book. Evan, even though he is painted as the big bad conquering warlord, respects Charlies boundaries and does not force her to lay with him until she is read. Share a bed yes, but not getting busy.

While Evan is fighting to maintain his imagine and the peace with in his army, while also bringing a new conquest to heel (Candonia), he also must face the fact that he is falling for his new wife which was not the plan at all. Charlie, likewise has to battle coming to terms with losing the life that she thought she would have, and marrying for love right out of the gate. But slowly they grow to respect each other than they fall in love. All though there are of course roadblocks and misunderstandings along the way.

With the gist of the story out of the way now on the the execution and writing. This is the stereotypical sci-fi romance novel set in a fantasy romance world. You know the alien lord finding/capturing a human woman and forcing her to be his mate. Then slowly fall in love. If you read with any frequency in the genre you know what I am talking about. The authors state they rewrote this book completely once and it went under several rounds of editing which only helped the book. It was smooth story, very tropey, but not in any way that I would consider bad.

Book two in the series follows Thalia, the second sister, and the Mountain, Evan’s silent right hand man. And I can’t wait. While the youngest sister holds most of the magical properties it seems, Thalia is the take no shit kind of character.

TW: Mentions of parental abuse (Stepmother towards Thalia)

Till we meet again!
Kaitlyn