When the Moon Hatched by Sarah A. Parker was my 20th read this year. This book went nuclear on Tiktok when it first came out and I am veryyyy late to the game but it was honestly a little long and that put me off. However, thanks to a lovely long commute, it was the perfect option for an audio read!

A summary attempt

Set in a world where God’s give certain people (or fae… that is not made clear to me) access to magic through the elements and dragon are real, but frequently fly into the sky and turn to stone when the cruelty of human wars become too much, or when they are near the end of their lives. Our MC, Raeve, is an assassin for the rebellion… not entirely of her volition but she is supposedly very good at it. The book opens with her stalking her latest target, an important Lord who secretly runs a fighting pit with child fighters. When she’s successful, a crown appointed bounty hunter is tasked with finding and killing her, except someone very close to Raeve gets hurt in the process. While this is all happening, a mysterious but alluring male has also been following Raeve, except she doesn’t have the urge to murder this one. Which is a good thing because when Kaan discovers Raeve arrested for murder, he hatches a plot to help her escape. He brings her back to his territory, where Raeve discovers unsettling reminders of a past that does not belong to her and a love that is not hers.

This story is interspersed with dairy entries from Elluin Nevan, the daughter of a king from a different territory. It tells the story of her childhood, the finding of her own dragon, her parents assassination and her betrothal to one of the notorious brother sets to rule the land’s three kingdoms. Her family is responsible for an infamous diadem, where the essence of the fifth God and fifth element is trapped, and must remain upon the brow of the women in her family line so that it stays trapped. Elluin is the latest in the line to wear it and she is transported to the court of her father’s betrothed to wait until she is of age to marry.

These two narratives weave together until we reach the point where the past meets the present… but it’s a past Raeve does not want to face. She can’t move on from her need for revenge, nor accept the possibility of good things in the present. The knowledge held in Elluin’s diary and Raeve’s memories could change everything…

My thoughts

This had so much potential, the world is really interesting and the imagery is incredible… it just needed some harsh editing. There was lots of flowery sentences, with too many metaphors, think ‘he looked at me with the fire of a volacano about to burst, plunging me into its lava to burn until blah blah blah’ but it was happening every paragraph. Also, there was a lot of swapping every day words for ‘fantasy’ ones but not in a way that really added to the narrative or helped with world building, if anything it took you out of the story, e.g. ‘sleep pallet’ for bed, ‘slumber’ instead of night, ‘butchers block’ instead of kitchin counter. Don’t get me wrong, when this is done well, I really enjoy – it can make the world feel more immersive and real but in this case it was done too frequently and unnecessarily.

The story also did that thing that happens in a lot of fantasy books where it tries to draw the narrative out by a character getting stuck on one thing. In this case, Raeve wanting revenge for a character who isn’t even on page long enough for us to care about them being lost in the first place, which is frequently used as an excuse to stall the story, like she can’t get closer to Kaan because she needs to go get revenge, she can’t make friends with so and so … because she needs to go get revenge and on and on and on.

All of that being said, I’m still going to read the next one, because without all my issues above it was genuinely an interesting story and I would like to know what happens next.