This book was so exciting from start to finish! The writing style just grabbed me in from the second I read the blurb, and I really enjoyed the dual POV. I loved the lgbtq+ representation; I’ve been in search of more sapphic fantasy novels! However in terms of criticism, I must say the book could’ve been condensed a little which would’ve helped to level out the pacing of the novel as a whole.

Thank you NetGalley and the publishers and author of this book for sending me an E book copy!

"I will always be a hero first, and a woman second."

This book was very good. I really enjoyed the characters, and how fleshed out they were. The way they developed throughout the book was very impressive and made it so much better. Throughout the book, I found that I felt like I was there the entire time, it didn't always feel like fantasy in that way.
The pacing was really well done and the plot was very interesting. I didn't feel bored at all throughout the entire book. I also really enjoyed how the book felt more like a fantasy realism novel.

Thank you to Netgalley and IBPA for the e-ARC.

This book had such a cool premise and an interesting magic system. Illusory magic battling each other, and there are Sapphic characters? Yes, please! Unfortunately, the story dragged quite a bit. If this book was condensed by maybe 100-150 pages, it'd probably flow a lot better. It also took a lot longer than I expected to get used to 3rd person present tense.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and the author for providing a copy to read and review.

I didn't love this as much as I thought I would. I found the writing style odd and thought it was too long for the storyline. I liked the world-building but the whole book just felt slow and dragged a bit.

This book's premise definitely piqued my interest. It features a strong female main character, an intriguing magic system, and is LGBT. But the plot seemed to be a little disjointed and lacking clear direction. The writing might use some improvement, and the characters needed more development. Overall, I enjoyed this book, but it didn't stick with me.

The concept of this book really had me intrigued. It is queer, has a very interesting magic system, and a strong female main character. But it lacked solid direction i really felt like the plot was a little all over the place. The characters were not fully fleshed out and the writing could use some work. Overall This was a fun read but not very memorable.

Thank you Netgalley for providing me a free E-Arc of this book in exchange for an honest opinion!

A Curse Of Illusions by Vivian Sader is a sapphic fantasy book. It revolves around Kamali, who can create illusions. She uses her power to help the people of her hometown. She also protects these people from the royal family, which want to kill all of the magicians to stay powerful.

The characters were mostly loveable. I couldn`t agree with all of them, but that is absolutely okay. The writing was easy to read and brought the story really alive. It has short chapters, which a lot of people love (including me). The characters are neither good or evil. Moraly grey - my favorite color of all. You decide who the villain is and who not. It is nothing new, but I still loved it. The worldbuilding was also very good. You get two differen point of views. Kamalia and Soria, which brings more dynamic into the book.

It was a nice and quick read to enjoy some sapphic fantasy!

A royal family whose magic leaches off the land and the people to benefit only their own power. An illusionist desperate to break the cycle of that magic. An assassin willing to give up her own future to free the people.

The premise of this book offered a lot promise when I was reading it over but something just fell a little short of me. My greatest issue was with pacing and character consistency. The pacing issue extended past the plot, which had multiple points were I thought the book was wrapping up only to realize that there was still more than half of the book left. There was not significant pay off for plot point. Moments through out the book lacked the weight and time some of them needed to really land in a significant way. Instead, it was just one thing after another with next to no consequence or reward. What twists there were either had little to no build up or got lost in the sheer volume of events that boiled down to "and even the characters couldn't have known". In the same vein, characters jumped from loyalty to loyalty with little reason or implication for the world at large.

I could see what Sader was going for with the ethics of world. But when one power comes from the death and exploitation of a country there is in fact a moral line of what is right and what is not. Royalty wanting comfort and not having learned to look beyond themselves is not enough to actually make a character interesting. Seemingly equal questioning was given to the royal family as was given to those who had revolted within this word. They were both, in my reading, presented as equally harmful in their own ways which surprising no on I'm sure didn't land well with me. I like a moral questioning of villainy. I like a questioning of method and power. This just did not land for me with the level of nuance or care I would have liked.

All that said there was something interesting in the question of illusion and reality within the magic system that I will probably think about for a little longer. Unfortunately, I'm not sure that was an intent so much as a side effect of everything else.

I tried very hard to get into this book but had to DNF at 26%

The premise was intriguing but I feel the book was let down by lack of progression in the story (so far as I read, it was very slow) and repetitive prose. I found it difficult to engage with the characters as I didn't feel they were fleshed out enough at the beginning and I found the story a little confusing as it jumped around so much - even in the middle of a chapter something would happen and you'd have no idea how or why it happened.

Unfortunately it's a DNF book for me.

Thank you Net Galley and Vivian Sader for giving me an ARC in exchange for an honest review. This is just my opinion and in no way is it a reflection of the author.

This book was ok but I felt the writing style was quite detached and clunky. When reading the blurb, I thought the book sounded exciting and thrilling and the cover was beautiful so I expected it to be a brilliant book, but once reading I saw that wasn’t the case. The novel itself was too slow-paced for me, had not enough action and some scenes felt too forced, resulting in me feeling bored and disconnected from the book. With the lack of action it also felt like the book was too long. When I finished, I thought this book felt more like a draft rather than the actual thing. I almost added this to my DNF as I was struggling to finish it. With a few tweaks the book itself could be much better.

I know this is also a bit petty but two characters that seemed like they would end up together didn’t and it made me feel very disappointed. I also felt that the ending didn’t make me feel satisfied as it all was rushed at the end and the plot twists were predictable.

This book had so much potential and I thought the concept was amazing. I noticed that this is a debut novel, it is almost impossible to obtain a perfect novel straight away, so this is a great start.

Thank you to NetGalley for a free E-ARC in return for an honest review!

Trigger warnings: Death/Death of a loved one (on screen, offscreen), gaslighting(? full intentions not clear), torture (implied, offscreen, mentioned), Ritualistic Blood Use, Genocide, Murder/Attempted Murder, Existential crisis'/questions, Blurred Reality.

At it's base, this book is just sapphic panic and I love it lmao. But also at the same time, it's not a soely queer book. It's about grief, morals and standing up for your cause.

Certainly a new take on the fantasy genre I'd say, it's got a lot of general fantasy tropes, but it felt kinda fresh honestly. It was nice seeing the constant moral dilemas, how the magic is used in the world, etc. I kinda wish that we saw more about different types of magic, there's only a couple of known magicians in the story despite knowing there's many more. Some characters are even established as magicians, but their magic isn't shown at all.

The plot sometimes confused me, it twists around a lot and it felt like some threads never got resolved, but for me none of them felt overly important so it didn't detract much from the overall experience. The characters where fun, their choices felt understandable and reasonable for the most part. Emotions run high and impulsivity is strong but the logic behind what's happening does mostly link up.

Thank you NetGalley for a chance to read A Curse Of Illusions.

I really enjoyed this book. I was hooked from the beginning and I liked the writing style (I know this is a hot topic of debate among other reviewers). I appreciated the representation in this book and the complex world building. I also enjoyed the few surprises throughout the story and the revelations about characters. I plan to read this again and I would recommend this to others.

EN: I received an Arc through Netgalley in exchange for a honest review.

This book felt like a rollercoaster, one you are really excited to get on and it's seems promising... but just disappoint you once you're on it.

My biggest problem with this book was the writing. It feels like and unfinished draft. The grammar it's unpolished but I could have ignored that if there weren't so many repetitions. The reader doesn't need to be reminder of everything all of the time. It gets annoying. And I got so frustrated with the repetitions that I could enjoy the book anymore.

The characters feel childish and it was difficult to me (having the same age as them) to understand their decisions. I felt maybe this would work better if their were 15 or 16. I felt like their decisions didn't reflect the situation their were in.

Sadly, I wouldn't recommend this book.

ES: Recibí un Arc a través de Netgalley a cambio de una reseña honesta.

Este libro se sintió como una montaña rusa, una en la que estás muy emocionado por subirte y que parece prometedora... pero que te decepciona una vez que estás en ella.

Mi mayor problema con este libro fue la escritura. Parece un borrador sin terminar. La gramática no tan pulida como debería, y podría haberlo ignorado (quizás porque como sé lo difícil que es escribir en inglés jaja) si no hubiera tantas repeticiones de información. El lector no necesita que le recuerden todo todo el tiempo. Resulta molesto. Y me frustré tanto con las repeticiones que ya no pude disfrutar del libro.

Los personajes se sienten infantiles y me resultaba difícil (teniendo la misma edad que ellos) entender sus decisiones. Sentí que quizás esto funcionaría mejor si tuvieran 15 o 16 años. Pero no podía comprender en que pensaban ni conectar con ellos porque sus decisiones no reflejaban la situación que estaban viviendo.

Lamentablemente, no recomendaría este libro.

A Curse of Illusions has magic, politics, complex relationships, and realistic personalities. Kamali suffers using her magic to keep the illusion of her hometown whole, in an inherited self-imposed social contract that no one in the city is aware of. Saira struggles with knowing herself while deceiving the royal family into believing she is a princess and magician. The young king needs magic to maintain his rule, but chooses violence rather than trying to work with the few magicians he hasn't already hunted down. Each character has their own motivations for the choices they make that the reader may or may not agree with at a given point with the information known at that time. There's action, trickery, awkward interactions, self-sacrifice, self-serving sacrifice of others, backstabbing, front-stabbing, secrets, twists, mistakes, teamwork... The alternation between POV is well used, and paced in such a way that those with short attention spans or limited, broken up time to read can enjoy the book at their preferred pace. The writer's voice is well suited to YA.

Dnf @ 40%

The reason i'm giving it 3 stars is because I love the concept and the mcs.
I think the characters and dialogue are good, but the pacing was too slow and the prose too flowery at times too. Because the events of the story weren't really progressing it was a bit hard to pick it back up until I decided to start another book and did not read this one for a week. In my opinion it could do with cutting out some parts that may add to the narrative but are unnecessary to the story so there's less to skip and it moves on faster.

A Curse of Illusions is aptly named: at times, I struggled to keep track of what was real and what was illusion. Also, I felt that the mention of some character's description of having dark skin felt forced and not authentic. I wish that the magic was better defined to relate to one's culture. As it stands, magic was a burden that was used to make everyone's else life better or to be taken: why is that?

The book was written well enough and flowed well; I just wasn't invested the way I hoped.

First, I would like to say thank you so much for this e-arc! Now on to the review. I love fast-paced books with short chapters! They’re my favorite, so this was a pretty good read for me! I really enjoyed the writing style. Some people wouldn’t like it because of how simple it is but that’s exactly what I needed right now! I love the LGBTQ+ representation and I love the powerful women characters. I relate to Saira so much! She’s so confident but also doesn’t even know what she’s doing. She is also impulsive and can’t make good decisions. So me! All of the characters felt very real and complex to me, which is great because a lot of characters feel unreal to me! I do wish that Vivian went more in depth with describing the world, like how the world works and the politics etc., because I felt like the world was missing something. Overall, for a debut novel, this was wonderful!

Overall I really liked the steampunk aspects, the world, the characters and the story line. The writing for me was a bit slow at times and that’s my reason for only 4 stars.

4 Stars.

A Curse of Illusions is about a young woman who is struggling with a burden placed upon her family generations before her. The pressure to do what is right vs what is expected of her and what looks like the only way out of her predicament kept me turning the pages to find out how she would solve the problem.

Vivian Sader has written a fantastic story with lots of twists and turns so you never quite know what to expect. As a reader who can usually get a sense of where a story is going and what is going to happen, there was quite a few shocks and surprises for me. I loved it.

The only reason I can't give this book 5 stars is because there is a few plot holes and some unrealistic exchanges between characters that left me scratching my head a couple of times.

Overall tho, I thoroughly enjoyed this book and was reading it every chance I had because I wanted to find out how and if Kamali would survive with her integrity in tact.

I made it only ⅕ of the way through A Curse of Illusions before reluctantly having to DNF it. I thought the concept of this book was strong, and had a lot of potential, but I could never envision myself recommending this title to anyone in its current state.

It honestly felt like I was reading an early draft, with various awkwardly structured sentences, unnecessary repetition in the prose (for instance, a character hands another a note explaining that it’s marked “urgent,” and then the prose informs us that it’s marked urgent, as if for the first time.) At one point, a chapter begins in the middle of a sentence- starting “and for too long,”- it’s not even mistakenly capitalised. There’s also a habit of words being used not quite incorrectly, but in very strange grammatical contexts: “I didn’t expect you to arrive this timely,” rather than “I didn’t expect your arrival to be this timely,” or “Dozens of tables line in front of Sara,” rather than “There are dozens of tables lined in front of Sara.”

Besides being unpolished, the prose was also incredibly rote and difficult to engage with, with an incredible amount of “telling,” rather than “showing”. There’s a lack of emotion that permeates everything in this book, especially the dialogue, which was particularly stilted and unnatural. Sader seems to struggle greatly with establishing tone. For instance, one character describes the memories of the murders she’s commited as an assasin, in a scene where she is becoming overwhelmed with guilt “pop[ping],” into her head. This casual, cutesy word just doesn’t belong in a scene like this: “crowding,” or even “rushing,” would have preserved the emotional tone more succesfully.

I wasn’t attached to any of the characters, nor did I feel like the world was thought out, but I would caution anyone to take those comments with a pinch of salt, as I didn’t progress very far through the novel, and there was time for these elements to improve. The exposition I did get on the magic system was confusing, and the insights into characters also had an extremely unnatural feel to them– the reveal that one of them has severe amnesia, for instance, comes as a casual diversion dropped in the middle of a sentence. I had hoped these elements would be strong enough to buoy me along, despite the technical issues with A Curse of Illusions, but unfortunately, that simply wasn’t the case.

I don't think this book is a lost cause, but I think it's a very long way from being a strong story.