#sam starbuck

Character, book, and author names under the cut

June Fun Day Book Photo Challenge

June 3: Repeat Day

Goodreads Link: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4822402353

Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Genre: M/M romance, found family, fictional royalty, royalty/TV show host pairing, food and cooking

@copperbadge​

Fete For A King by Sam Starbuck is a funny, light-hearted and cute m/m romance novel. The first in the Shivadhverse series, it is a heartwarming story with some lovely worldbuilding and important themes.

I all but devoured this in the span of an hour or so, and it was just what I needed. The story itself has very little angst, with the author able to undercut any possible tension in the best way possible, while still leaving room for emotional stakes and investment.

Fete For A King had great characters and relationships, and I loved how distinct both Gregory and Eddie were on the page, and how Eddie (his character, background, occupation) was taken seriously. The pairing of Gregory, who is more serious and likes plans, with Eddie’s more carefree and sunny attitude, was amazingly done.

Character, book, and author names under the cut

It occurs to me, a couple days after I finished reading Sam Starbuck's fourth romance novel, that even though I read these novels on AO3, they should still count as books I read! He's publishing them all and everything!

So I have retroactively added three books to my count for last year (Fete for a King, Infinite Jes, and The Lady and the Tiger) and now I guess I'm writing a review for all four at once.

I've been following Starbuck's fanfic for years, under the name copperbadge, but last year he started on an original series of linked romance novels set in a tiny fictional European country, along the traditional Ruritanian lines, and I was like, sure, why not. The books feature plenty of queer characters (and only one of the four is about an m/f couple), a country where kingship is an elected position, and lots of feel-good content. Also two of the four have neurodivergent protagonists.

Of the four books, I liked Fete for a King (about a young king and a loud American chef) and The Twelve Points of Caleb Canto (about two Eurovision contestants) the best; the two middle ones (king emeritus and podcaster; two nobles doing politics) didn't land as well for me for a variety of reasons.

Overall the writing style in this series trends strongly in the direction of quippy dialogue for everyone, resulting in me feeling that there's very little sense of there being individual voices for the various characters. I also find constant quips to get kind of exhausting to read after a while, personally.

I also don't love that the focus is on a royal family. Yes, this is not a hereditary monarchy, and yes, the family is very open and welcoming to providing support to whoever appears in their ambit, but....idk. I think this may be one of those things where shining a light on the fact that the book knows hereditary country-leadership is bad means that I'm just more primed to notice ways in which the solution to the problem is imperfect.