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Series Review: The Brothers Sinister by Courtney Milan

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. This review is for The Brothers Sinister by Courtney Milan. Full Audio Here   The Governess Affair Miss Serena Barton intends to hold the petty, selfish duke who had her sacked responsible for his crimes. But the man who handles all the duke's dirty business has been ordered to get rid of her by fair means or foul. She’ll have to prove more than his match… The Duchess War The last time Minerva Lane was the center of attention, it ended badly—so badly that she changed her name to escape her scandalous past. So when a handsome duke comes to town, the last thing she wants is his attention. But that is precisely what she gets... A Kiss for Midwinter Miss Lydia Charingford does her best to forget the dark secret that nearly ruined her life, hiding it beneath her smi...

Blood of Elves - Andrzej Sapkowski (The Witcher, #1)

Blood of Elves is methodical and languid, slowly building the picture of a dark world torn by war. I enjoyed this one, I completely see how it spawned a game series if the rest of the series is like this first book. 

It has a feel of a world already in progress that doesn't really have the time to pause and catch you up on what's happening right away, but it balances this by giving just a few key events or people at a time. The exposition comes in the middle or end of various sequences rather than at the start, and it creates a feeling that you can just relax and not worry about all the picky details for a minute. We have a few obvious protagonists and then kind of a sea of shifting loyalties and petty players in some larger game that we'll hopefully understand more as the series progresses.

Overall I liked it and I'm going to keep reading these, but part of that is because I want to see where it goes, rather than there being anything particularly gripping or amazing in this book. Geralt's dynamic with Ciri is brusque but nice, and I'm looking forward to more of them.

There's a lot of frank discussion of sexuality, specifically sexual expectations and stereotypes for women and girls. I think this is balanced by the generally sex-positive angle of the series so far, but I'll be paying attention to this topic as I continue reading the series. It's a little too early for me to tell whether it's heading somewhere creepy, but so far it's good.

CW for sexism, violence, death.

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