3.5 Stars
There is a prequel to this book (The Summons by Shona Husk) that tells the story of the first meeting of Roan, the Goblin King and Eliza, a then 16-year old girl. I thoroughly enjoyed the prequel but you don’t need to have read it to understand this book. This book picks up 9 years after the prequel when Eliza calls to the Goblin King for a second time.
Eliza is about to get married to a man she doesn’t love, a man who has blackmailed her into staying with him. And when Eliza catches Steve with another women at her birthday party she gets back and Steve by ruining his suits and calls for the Goblin King again. This time, as warned, he won’t return her from the Shadowlands. He thinks that the curse that has kept him as the Goblin King for almost two thousand years will be broken if he takes a willing queen. Only Eliza isn’t willing. Once she goes back to the Shadowlands she decides she wants to go back home. There is a lot of that in this book. To the Shadowlands. To the Fixed Realm. No, to the Shadowlands. And back to the Fixed Realm. Make up your mind Eliza dear! Roan and his brother Dai are trying to fight off the druid who wrongly cursed them, thinking this may also break the curse. They are the last of the Decangli who were cursed and have to fight off the call to give up their souls and become wholly goblin. It was a great story line. I haven't read anything like this...ever.
I felt like the last half of the book was a lot of nothing. Roan had given up and was just picking the time when he would die. Dai, had given up and Eliza didn’t have any sort of plan. It just felt odd. They had a few plans and they didn’t work, then it was “…meet me here…” and “…come to dinner…”
I was also a little put off with the amount of time Eliza spent pushing the goblin part of Roan away. I can understand the first time she saw the goblin that she wouldn’t want to be near him and that it might take a while to get over that, but it took until their last dinner for her to see past the goblin. She had told Roan she loved him before this and knew she loved him way before this, but still didn’t want anything to do with his gray skin. She knew it was still Roan so get over it Eliza!
