Always a dutiful son, Brishen agrees to the marriage and discovers his bride is as ugly as he expected and more beautiful than he could have imagined. A trade and political alliance between the human kingdom of Gaur and the Kai kingdom of Bast-Haradis requires that he marry a Gauri woman to seal the treaty. Radiance truly shines, and I can’t help but hope some of that light spills over to multicultural and interracial romance.~THE PRINCE OF NO VALUE~ Brishen Khaskem, prince of the Kai, has lived content as the nonessential spare heir to a throne secured many times over. I want happy endings for more writers and more readers.

That’s the thing about reading: You take a leap of faith, and if you’re lucky you get a happy ending. I took a chance buying her book and in buying into her and Brishen’s connection, and it worked. But I took her as written and loved her for who she turned out to be. But that doesn’t mean the other work, championing diverse books, is finished. If you can pronounce “Brishen,” you can pronounce “Akshay,” you know? I initially thought Ildiko was an alt-world version of a Japanese woman - until she was described as a pale redhead with blue eyes. Between books like Draven’s and Jeffe Kennedy’s Twelve Kingdoms series, we have a promising start. I hear a lot of people saying that fantasy romance is about to experience a resurgence, and I certainly hope so. This is a beautiful story, not only of love but of cultural exchange and understanding - and I’m a little sad that such a thing is widely embraced by the romance industry when it stars a white woman and a reptilian/avian man but not when it features people of color. If you can root for Brishen and Ildiko, laugh at their banter and chew on your nails when they’re in peril, what’s so hard about doing that for Farrah Rochon’s characters or Jeannie Lin’s? I invested in their emotional journey, in their attempt to make a home amidst threats of unrest from an opposing nation, and in how they learned to live with their differences. And that honest delight with these characters never wavered. I actually may have made a noise like a barking seal.

As the Kai are gray-skinned, yellow-eyed and clawed, Ildiko has her own thoughts: Fortunately, they approach this arrangement with practicality and good humor - which carries through the entire tale.ĭuring their first meeting, Brishen calls his human bride-to-be “a hag of a woman,” because he is appalled by her mollusk-pale skin and odd eyes. A gentle love story laced with political intrigue, Radiance finds Brishen of the Kai and Ildiko of the Gauri wed to cement an alliance between their countries. Fortunately, that was far from the case with Radiance, Grace Draven’s first Wraith Kings novel, which came out in January. I’ve bought a few books based on trusted squee and ended up burned. Whenever a book is hyped all over the romance blogosphere and Twitterverse, I get a little nervous.

Radiance novel grace draven