The Foxglove King (The Nightshade Crown, #1)

by Hannah Whitten

In this gilded, gothic, and romantic new epic fantasy series from New York Times-bestselling author Hannah Whitten, a young woman's secret power to raise the dead plunges her into the dangerous world of the Sainted King's royal court.

Lore has been living by her wits since she was a child, running poisons for the cartel that took her in, avoiding the attention of the law, and keeping her illicit affinity for death magic a secret. 

When a job goes wrong and Lore is captured by the Sainted King's warrior-monks, she expects death. But King August has a different plan. Entire villages on the outskirts of the country have been dying overnight, seemingly at random. Lore can either use her magic to find out what's happening - or face the pyre.

Thrust into a lavish court where no one can be believed and even fewer can be trusted, Lore must navigate an intricate web of politics, religion, and forbidden romance and solve the King's mystery. A mystery more dangerous and twisted than Lore can even imagine.

• ISBN10: 031643499X
• ISBN13: 9780316434997
• Publish Date: 7 March 2023
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Orbit
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 480
• Language: English

Reviews

[Quirky Cat]

Book Summary:

Lore is a rare magic user with a tie to death. It makes her a criminal in the city of Dellaire, so she’s been forced to hide it her whole life. Until a betrayal changes everything, and now the powers that be want to use her.

So now Lore has to use her death magic for the crown - while also spying on the crown prince. It’s a complicated situation, to say the least. One wrong move could easily result in her execution.

My Review:

Let me preface my review by saying this is the first time I’ve read anything by Hannah F. Whitten, so I cannot make any comparisons to her past work. Perhaps that’s why I seem to have enjoyed The Foxglove King more than her regular readers.

To start with, the magical system and world are fascinating. We have a world torn apart by forbidden (death) magic and religious zealots, from the sounds of it. There’s also a complex political system, especially if you enter the capital. And then there’s the poison, which can be used for the obvious, in addition to lengthening one’s life, if used carefully enough.

As for the characters, there are three primary characters. I mostly liked the three of them, with varying degrees. I’m not huge on the romantic subplot and may even be in the minority for my ship (I have no idea; I haven’t seen people talking about it too much).

Long story short, I really enjoyed how creative The Foxglove King was! I already went ahead and got my hands on The Hemlock Queen, so I’ll have to make myself some time to read that, hopefully soon.

Highlights:
Romantasy
Magic & Poison
Lies & Betrayal
Forced Proximity

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[pamela]

The Foxglove King is a tough one to rate, because on one hand, I had a lot of fun reading it, but on the other, there were some pretty glaring things that did actually detract from my overall enjoyment.

Let's start with the good. Hannah F. Whitten writes beautifully. She does a great job of setting a scene, has built an intriguing magical world, clearly has an idea of what she wants to do with it, and has developed a really interesting magic system that was thematically consistent, that made sense as part of the plot. The prose felt decadent; like having an entire, rich, creamy chocolate cake all to yourself.

But like the cake, The Foxglove King somehow ended up just feeling like too much. It was all flavour and very little substance. The deep world building was only represented on a surface level by the narrative, because instead, we had to follow along the path of a trope-filled romance. Death magic, missing gods, religious cults, dead villages, zombies! I wanted to know more and really dive deeply into the world that Whitten created. Instead, I got pages of angsty YA-trope-filled romance.

Don't get me wrong. I love an angsty YA-trope-filled narrative, but this particular novel just had too many of them. Enemies to lovers? Check. Love triangle? Check. Fated mates? Check. Broken engagements? Check. Coitus interruptus? Check. Betrayal? Check. No one in The Foxglove King had any agency. Partially the point, so I'll give Hannah F. Whitten that one, but even the romances lacked agency. Instead of having feelings develop naturally, it fell back on the toxic destiny trope.

The real issue for me is that The Foxglove King focused too heavily on vibes and not enough on narrative development. There is a world here, and it wasn't utilised. Instead, everything was just descriptions of decadence, with no sense of the wider setting. Protagonists were given skills that they either never used, or when they did use them, they were bad at it. I get that it's the first book in a trilogy and is setting up for development in later books, but they way you get me to read the rest of them is to get me invested, and The Foxglove King just didn't do that. Everything was surface-level, lacking a depth that I sorely needed.

My expectations may have been different had this been marketed as YA fantasy, not adult fantasy. This falls firmly in the YA tropes bracket, so I definitely went in with different expectations than what The Foxglove King could deliver on. Overall, I just wanted more. And The Foxglove King did not provide.