I’m such a huge fan of Weymouth books and I knew I had to read Steel & Spellfire. Weymouth is so talented at creating intriguing worlds and this is no different! Keep reading this book review of Steel & Spellfire for my full thoughts.
Summary
Pandora Small has two ruling objectives: first, to keep the prodigious extent of her power secret, in a world where mages are feared and governed by suffocating laws. Second, to find her wealthy and noble-born patron, a shadowy figure bound to Pandora by magic, who stole her childhood and grew her power until she became a weapon rather than a girl. To that end, she’s posing as an Ingenue, a privileged and petted young woman of strictly limited abilities, who is allowed access to the royal court’s social season in order to find a husband and patron to control her magic.
But on Pandora’s arrival at court, Kit Beacon, one of the most promising members of the Royal Guard, inadvertently learns the true scope of her power. Privately sympathetic towards mages and the difficulties they face, Beacon decides to keep Pandora’s secret. But when someone or something with powers terribly like Pandora’s own begins slaughtering her fellow Ingenues, Beacon’s resolve to keep what he knows about her private is put to the test.
Tasked with protecting all the girls in the palace, not just one, Beacon will have to decide whether Pandora is a suspect or an ally, while to win his trust, Pandora will have to let him know more of her still—the worst of who she is and what she’s done. Because only unity between them during the social whirlwind to come will enable Pan to find her patron and Beacon the killer, and ensure they both see justice meted out.
Review
(Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher. This has not impacted my review which is unbiased and honest.)
My favorite element of Steel & Spellfire was the magic system and the world. I love the idea of patrons and magical Beacons. It creatures this dichotomy of power and choice. I am so intrigued to see where the rest of the series goes because the world Weymouth creates in Steel & Spellfire is amazing. The world wants to control Pandora, but little do they know she’s already bound. They have created weapons out of these essentially debutantes, but Pandora is even more dangerous than they know. Not only because of the strength of her power, but what she was trained to do.
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Told in dual POV, Steel & Spellfire is about ambition and features so many different twists and turns. There are unsteady alliances all grounded in the unfairness of this binding system. With plenty of swoons, I was always distracted by how much I fell into the world. I just wanted a bit more from this book. I know it’s book one, so that might be where it stems from, but with the Patron and Pandora’s past, I would have loved a bit more reveals earlier on. Once you get into the swing of things though, Weymouth delivers. And ultimately, so impressed with the world!
Find Steel & Spellfire on Goodreads, Storygraph, Amazon, Bookshop. org, Blackwells, & Libro. fm.