Quite lovely historical fantasy.

Robin Blyth has more than enough bother in his life. He's struggling to be a good older brother, a responsible employer, and the harried baronet of a seat gutted by his late parents' excesses. When an administrative mistake sees him named the civil service liaison to a hidden magical society, he discovers what's been operating beneath the unextraordinary reality he's always known.
Now Robin must contend with the beauty and danger of magic, an excruciating deadly curse, and the alarming visions of the future that come with it—not to mention Edwin Courcey, his cold and prickly counterpart in the magical bureaucracy, who clearly wishes Robin were anyone and anywhere else.
Robin's predecessor has disappeared, and the mystery of what happened to him reveals unsettling truths about the very oldest stories they've been told about the land they live on and what binds it. Thrown together and facing unexpected dangers, Robin and Edwin discover a plot that threatens every magician in the British Isles—and a secret that more than one person has already died to keep.

Red White & Royal Blue meets Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell in debut author Freya Marske's A Marvellous Light, featuring an Edwardian England full of magic, contracts, and conspiracies.

A Marvellous Light (Last Binding, 1) : Marske, Freya: Amazon.de: Bücher

I received an ARC and reviewed honestly and voluntarily.

Content warnings include: bullying, murder, torture, misogyny, undertones of systemic homophobia.

It had a great mystery and well-paced romance, though the secret magical society aspect wasn't as prominent as I thought it would be.
Not that I minded. I liked the much smaller scale mystery solving. There was a nice balance between personal tragedy needing to be resolved purely for the sake of one person, as well as bigger scale, potentially world-changing or even world-breaking consequences.

I liked Edwin and Robin, they fit well together and had a great dynamic. I related to Edwin's bookish personality a lot, and I liked Robin, for all his genial noble jock vibes, who was already polite and genuinely friendly.
However, I struggled a bit with keeping their POVs apart. Even with their names I mixed them up frequently, fumbling with who's perspective the current event were told from.
Similarly, I often completely missed big events that changed the mood of entire scenes - there were several instances were such 180° turns occurred, and I found myself scrambling to try and figure out what happened. As much as I liked nuance and subtlety in storytelling, some hints were unfortunatley too subtle for me.

Before and while reading I was under the wrongful impression of this being a standalone, and was a bit puzzled by some of the plot threads that seemed to be going nowhere, or far beyond the scope of this book. While writing this review I looked it up, and oops, turns out this is first in a series. That makes a lot more sense. I am curious though, as the second book is told from a different character's perspective - and a character I quite enjoyed, if not the one I hoped for.

Overall an enjoyable read with a great mix of finely balanced subplots. Fans of mystery, romance, historical, and fantasy intrigue will get their fill from this book.

Check the book out on Goodreads and buy it here.

~iam

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