In ‘Vows of Empire’, Emily Skrutskie delivers a wrenchingly good and mostly unpredictable end (for now) to her YA space opera M/M romance ‘Bloodright Trilogy’.
This review contains spoilers and reader deductions. I will reference characters and events from the first two books.
For spoiler-free review, TL;dr….read the other books first, grab this one, & hang on for a wild ride. This is unabashedly but not graphic *queer* SF, so don’t read it if you don’t like that genre.
First: the action in this book is both harrowing and hilarious, often in the same scene. Skulking, snark, dramatic rescues, royal weddings, gay supporting character couples, more space battles, more romance, more tender moments…everything that made the first two books shine is all here, and more.
Second: my kudos for Skrutskie’s skill at spinning plots around unreliable narrators!
Book One showed Ettian’s completely understandable duplicity about his royal origins. Book Two was all about Gal’s need to bury his true hopes and plans under several layers of misdirection.
In Book Three, we have both angsty, brilliant princes dialed up to eleven. They still take second place to mob-daughter-guttersnipe-supermechanic-spaceknight Wen Iffan.
Who is not, thankfully, the madwoman she could be. Wen is sheer joy to experience in all of her scenes. Her character arc was something I suspected, as it was the only logical outcome of the dysfunctional political system. It didn’t go quite where I expected it, but this was even better.
Nor is Wen the only strong, well-written female character. Nor are secondary characters *of any gender* denied depth and a bit of back story.
Even Empress Iva, Gal’s ruthless mother, is given some personality beyond ‘ruthless dictator’.
Which leads to a *big* plot hole I suspect Skrutskie has already factored into her work, should she return to this series. Iva is not the type to ignore backup plans. According to Gal’s own recollections, Iva would have seen how unsuitable Gal might be to rule her vision of empire. And she lies when she needs to.
I suspect Gal has a fully-legitimate and indoctrinated sibling hiding somewhere, waiting to avenge their mother’s defeat.
And I think Wen, Ettian, and Gal will do just fine against them.
‘Vows’ is a satisfying conclusion to a queer gay space opera series I wish I’d had on my bookshelf back in 1987, when I first started my own writing journey.