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Series: The Orc Prince Trilogy by Lionel Hart

Greetings and welcome to Reviews That Burn: Series Reviews, part of Books That Burn. Series Reviews discuss at least three books in a series and cover the overarching themes and development of the story across several books. I'd like to thank longtime Patron Case Aiken, who receives a monthly shoutout. Full Audio Here   An elven prince. The son of an orc warlord. In two warring nations, their arranged marriage brings peace. They never expected to fall in love. Prince Taegan Glynzeiros has prepared since childhood to fight and lead armies against invading orc forces, the enemies of elves for hundreds of years. But after a successful peace treaty, the elven prince will not be fighting orcs, but marrying one. The first words he speaks to Zorvut are their wedding vows. Despite being considered the runt amongst the orc warlord’s children, Taegan finds him to be intelligent and thoughtful—everything the stereotypes about orcs say he shouldn’t be. He doesn’t want to fall in love, but Zorv...
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Gathering Blue by Lois Lowry (The Giver Quartet, #2)

Gathering Blue by Lois Lowry is a dystopian novel about disability and exploitation in a small village. It builds a strange and compelling world around Kira, where syllables in names denote age and maturity, where orphaned children are redistributed, but not loved.

It's difficult to discuss much in this novel without spoilers, but it is a different society in the same world as The Giver, a society which is limited by whatever disaster broke the world into small enclaves and scattered villages with vastly different organizational structures and coping mechanisms. Kira's village is patriarchal, ableist, and harsh. She was born with a deformed foot and was only allowed to live because of her grandfather's status and reputation.

The world is fascinating, every bit of description feels precise and necessary. The only thing I would want changed is to have the book last longer. It feels... unresolved, but that's probably on purpose. It's trying to be hopeful in a very bleak world, but we don't get to see that hope fulfilled in the way I would have liked. Again, that feels purposeful and it doesn't make it a bad story, just probably not one to turn to for a comfort read.

*Edit: It’s unresolved because it’s book two of a quartet. I’ve found some of what I was missing in book three, Messenger.

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