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I bought this book because the author apparently used to frequent Critters.org, a great critique site for writers of SFF, and horror. I wanted to see the skills of the biggest name it produced.

Alas, I don't think much of Smith's skills.

First off, I only read Crown Duel, the first half of this book, and skimmed through Court Duel because I didn't want to waste any more of my time reading this thing. If it didn't have very short chapters I likely would have given it up much earlier. As such, I'm not recommending you read it and will joyfully sprinkle this review with spoilers.

Smith offers up promises that are not delivered. The protagonist is deeply irritating and non-sensical. The plot is thin on the ground. The whole thing is offensive to women. The writing is pretty poor too.

Promises first. This is supposed to be a fantasy novel about a war. The only fantasy elements were the Hill Folk, briefly described in the first chapter, and then infrequently mentioned. They provide the pretext of the book, granted--years ago in exchange for the humans not burning down the trees, the Hill Folk provide them with magic fire sticks. This agreement is known as the Covenant, and when the current king plans to renege on it, the protagonist's province goes to war.

The Hill Folk only actually turn up in this story in a deus ex machina right at the end. The war is nothing but a bookend. What Smith should have promised was an episodic story in which pretty much nothing of importance happens until right at the end.

Meliara is a spunky teenage girl, allegedly, but instead she comes off as an absolute moron. She was only taught to read a year prior to the story beginning, after a childhood of running rampant with the local peasant kids. In that year she not only learns to read and write, she teaches herself maths and figures out how to solve the financial problems of the province. At the age of 16?ish. Having barely any formal education. Despite this lack of education, Meliara speaks far more cleverly than everyone else in her province, including her brother who has been reading for years and yet sounds like a yokel. This pseudo-intelligence does not manifest in her actions.

She does things that she admits freely to herself are stupid, and has an angry streak wide enough that she risks the lives of her people multiple times. She trusts herself implicitly, despite knowing that she makes dumb mistakes all the time. She loves her brother greatly, but won't listen to a word he says. This is incredibly frustrating. People that lacking in self-awareness may exist, but they do not make good protagonists (at least not in this book).

She's also one of those deeply annoying characters who think they're totally ugly even though everyone around them is telling her she's such a cutie, but she just can't believe them, they're obviously all lying. All of them.

The plot sounded promising ... small province faces off against the powerful and slightly evil king even though they're just a plucky band of commonfolk. Not the most original idea, perhaps, but could be fun.

The actual plot is ... maybe two chapters of war at the start? Heavily glossed over, and the Mel gets caught by the opposing side, escapes and spends basically the entire rest of the book wandering around trying not to get caught. The main person pursuing her is a Marquis who is Totes Hawt but clearly a lying snivelly idiot ... but only to Mel. To the reader it's blatantly obvious that Mel is totally misunderstanding everything this guy is saying and after a few hilarious mishaps they're definitely going to end up together. #prideandprejudice This is an acceptable subplot, if an uninspired one, but the fact that Mel ignores/is too stupid to see all the evidence that Totes Hawt is smart and trying to help, and irrationally hates this guy makes it extremely insulting to women. Like women are too moronic to see what's right in front of our faces and it has to be gently pointed out to us, otherwise we'll just listen to half a sentence before throwing things and getting pissy. Of course Mel is a spunky young girl so she can't be a sexist portrayal, right???? No.

The "war" ends in a couple of brief chapters at the end when Mel goes off to attack a castle belonging to Totes Hawt, who has clearly stated how much of an ally he is multiple times, because she just doesn't believe him. She attacks the castle with a handful of poorly-trained commoners, who are all super happy to die for her because she's so great. There's some more meandering plotless nonsense before Totes Hawt, Mel, and Mel's brother all contract colds, don chain mail, and then go to fight the Evil K‌ing. The colds are focused on quite a lot, yet add nothing to the plot. Maybe it was supposed to be quirky? I don't know.

Anyway, in the final battle (the only battle we see in this war), the Evil King spots Mel (who is drowned in chainmail and a helmet) and gets angry because she escaped him for so long and so naturally breaks formation and goes on a mad rampage to kill the teenage girl. Even though he's faced with fully grown men who know how to fight and want to take his crown, the king would rather go for some petty revenge. He conks Mel on the head, but of course she's later informed that Totes Hawt came to her rescue and killed the king immediately afterwards. Raise your hand if you saw that coming? All of you? Ok.

Crown Duel over, Court Duel has Mel heading off to court where Totes Hawt guy is now headed to be king because obviously. Judging from my skimming they get in a letter-driven courtship where he knows who she is, but she doesn't know it's him, which isn't at all massively creepy or anything. It looks like there's some poorly-thought-out war threatened, which is over in like two chapters (sound familiar?) and then smoochy times commence between Mel and Totes Hawt.

This particular collection is topped off with a brief short story in which Mel apparently starts to learn magic, but for some reason gets it into her head that Totes Hawt doesn't want her to learn, so she decides to burn her books. Because of course that's the smart thing to do. And then Totes Hawt has to patiently explain the hugely obvious facts to her because she just can't figure it out herself, being a silly-minded woman desperate to keep her romance alive by remaining ignorant. Please excuse me while I vomit.

The nuts and bolts of the writing is pretty average. It wasn't difficult to read, but a lot of the dialogue just seemed naff. Like Smith was trying to put in cute colloquialisms to thrust us into the setting further. Smith doesn't pull this off, because we hardly ever see it. Mel's brother and friends are about the only ones who do it, and we don't see them throughout the whole of the middle of the book. It isn't frequent enough to gain context, and Mel doesn't use them herself for no apparant reason.

Analysing this book for this review has actually made me dislike it more, which is pretty impressive. I suggest you steer clear.