Review: A Marvellous Light (The Last Binding #1)

A Marvellous Light (The Last Binding #1)
By Freya Marske

Published By: Tor UK
Publication Date: October 26, 2021
Date Read: January 21, 2023
Genre: Adult – Historical Fantasy
Source: Bought
Format: Audiobook
Pages: 384

From Goodreads:
Set in an alternative Edwardian England, this is a comedy of manners, manor houses, and hedge mazes: including a magic-infused murder mystery and a delightful queer romance.

For fans of Georgette Heyer or Julia Quinn’s Bridgerton, who’d like to welcome magic into their lives . . .

Young baronet Robin Blyth thought he was taking up a minor governmental post. However, he’s actually been appointed parliamentary liaison to a secret magical society. If it weren’t for this administrative error, he’d never have discovered the incredible magic underlying his world.

Cursed by mysterious attackers and plagued by visions, Robin becomes determined to drag answers from his missing predecessor – but he’ll need the help of Edwin Courcey, his hostile magical-society counterpart. Unwillingly thrown together, Robin and Edwin will discover a plot that threatens every magician in the British Isles.

A Marvellous Light is an adult historical fantasy that I have had sitting on my shelf for quite a while. I’d never heard about this book until I received it in one of my Illumicrate boxes about a year ago. When it was picked as the January 2023 choice for my book club, I was quite excited to see what it was like. Unfortunately this book just wasn’t for me. I decided to listen to it on audio, as I also had the audio edition, and I don’t know if I missed something by listening instead of physically reading it but I struggled to take much of it in, and I was consistently just confused about what was going on.

One thing I did like about this book was the writing style. Freya Marske has an incredible writing style that makes you feel like you can very easily just fall into the book and forget the world around you. However, despite this, I felt like the world building and characterisations were lacking. This book is set in an alternate Edwardian England and I just didn’t feel any sort of development of this alternate world. I was just really confused a whole lot, and I couldn’t really tell a lot of the characters apart. They all felt very same-y to me.

This book is spicy… very spicy. And while that’s fine… I don’t particularly like listening to really spicy books on audio. Once we had the main characters make their connection, I don’t think anything happened other than them just having a lot of very graphic… very messy sex. There were multiple times where I was feeling sick at some of the detail. I swear I am not usually like that, but listening to it rather than reading it is different. By the end of the book I was constantly like *roll eyes* here we go again. There was far too little plot for my tastes.

I think this is the perfect book for people who love books with little plot, lots of vibes and romance and spice. Unfortunately I am very much a plot driven reader, so I found myself getting very frustrated throughout the whole thing. This book was definitely not for me, and I probably will not be reading anything by this author again in the future. I am definitely not the intended audience of this book.

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