Inda by Sherwood Smith

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Category: Adult
Genre: Fantasy
Content: Some talk of pleasure houses and sex, but no details. I didn't finish the book so there could be more.

Indevan-Dal is the second son of the Prince and Princess of Choraed Elgaer, destined to become his elder brother Tanrid's Shield Arm-his military champion. Like all second sons, he is to be privately trained at home by Tanrid, the brother whose lands he will one day protect.

When the King's Voice comes to summon Inda to the Military Academy, he might well feel foreboding, or even fear-war is imminent-yet youthful Inda feels only excitement. But there are things that Tanrid hadn't prepared him for, and Inda will soon learn that the greatest threats to his safety will not come from foreign enemies, but from supposed allies within his own country.

DNF at 48%. This was the first book I've tried by Sherwood Smith and I have some mixed feelings about it. To begin with, military fantasy isn't really a favorite genre of mine. The writing style took a little getting used to and all the hard to pronounce names and honorifics were annoying.

There were some things about the book that I liked. The political intrigue was interesting, and I really liked reading the parts about the different women and how they fit into the world. I also really liked Inda and some of the other boys at the academy, but I did get tired of all the bullying that was going on and that the adults did nothing to stop.

This book started out slow for me and I didn't really get into it until well into the story. It did start to pick up toward the end of part one, but I feel like this series is just not for me. There are three more books in the series after this one, and after looking into all of them I decided I'm not feeling the series enough to invest that much of my reading time into it. There are a couple of reasons for this. One is that the world is not interesting enough to me, another is that I prefer books with monogamous relationships in them, and it appears this series incorporates a lot of casualness in that regard.



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