This is a short and sweet novel with an opera connection.

Queen Shulamit and her girlfriend, the cook Aviva, need a solution to prevent the lesbian queen from having to marry a man in order to conceive a legitimate heir. Prince Kaveh of a neighboring country needs someone to get his boyfriend out of jail, where he’s scheduled to be executed for standing up to Kaveh’s father, the king, in a labor dispute. They come to a mutually beneficial arrangement– Kaveh will be Shulamit’s husband-in-name-only, and Shulamit will rescue his boyfriend.

As you can probably guess from the names and synopsis, this is a queer fantasy novel where most of the characters are Jewish. It’s published by the small press Prizm, the YA imprint of Torquere, which will be publishing my Walking on Knives. Shira Glassman mentioned that the plot was very loosely inspired by the Verdi opera/Schiller play Don Carlos (in which a tyrannical king kills his son’s best friend). That happens to be my favorite opera and my favorite play, so of course I had to check it out.

I liked the characterizations, with the main characters having flaws that made them more lovable than if they were perfect (eg Shulamit is a worrier, Kaveh tends toward hysterics, but both of them try to overcome their flaws). There was a lot of emphasis on the dignity and importance of work, whether it be the initial labor dispute over wage theft or Kaveh learning from Aviva how to cook as a way to be useful and avoid being overcome by his emotions. Also, though this is book two in a series, I was able to understand it easily without having read the first book.

On to the not-so-good: this book really could have used another line-edit, as many sentences had very awkward constructions. Also, the ending, in which Kaveh’s father is convinced by his long-lost lover to release his prisoner, left me confused as to why the implications were not more deeply explored. Said long-lost love is totally aware of how the king has become a terrible person, yet agrees to marry him– I would have liked to know if this was a sacrifice on her part or if the king had some redeeming qualities. This is not even discussed.

Overall, a light and charming read.