If I haven’t done so before, I hereby declare F.T. Lukens my favourite author of all times. I mean it. They deserve it. I’ve read three out of their four books (and the fourth one is resting in my bookshelf, waiting for its time to shine) and all of them were absolutely stunning and exactly the type of fiction I looooove.
If you’re looking for some cozy queer fantasy, F.T. Lukens is your author. And Spell Bound is worth a consideration.
The plot
Edison Rooker, later named Rook, is not magical – but he grew up surrounded by magic, living with his grandmother in a hut outside of the city. When his grandmother died, he was taken out of his home and told not to ever return again. After graduating, he decided to ask the sorceress Antonia Hex for a job, seeking access to the magical world again. Antonia accepts him as her new office staff – and soon as her apprentice.
He gets in touch with Sun, the apprentice of Antonia’s rival (or „colleague“) Fable Page – and they grow very fond of each other. There’s only one big problem: By accepting Rook as her apprentice, Antonia breaks a dozen rules of the Consortium and that leads to tons of trouble.
The characters
Once again, F.T. Lukens offers a fairly diverse queer cast: Teenage boy Rook, the excentric sorceress Antonia, the very much less excentric and more traditional (as in: they seem as witchy as you could imagine, living in a hut and making potions) nonbinary sorcerer Fable and their also nonbinary apprentice Sun. While there’s a good dose of frenemy-energy between Antonia and Fable, the rivals-to-friends-to-nothing-to-lovers game between Rook and Sun is strong. There’s also a hint at ethnic diversity again, with Sun’s family presumably being of Korean origin (judged by their names) and Mavis, a character who pops up later in the story, as a person of colour.
And once again, what I love about F.T. Lukens‘ fantastic settings is that the protagonists always struggle a lot, but their sexual identity never plays a part in this struggle and each time I read a book I am once again delighted to be given a cozy queer romance that is usually headed towards a happy ending – after all those years in which queer characters and their relationships were doomed.
I also love the characters a lot. Rook and Sun are the typical extrovert-introvert couple, which feeds their rivalry at first, as Rook, albeit fascinating Sun, somehow annoys the shit out of him (also please note that despite their names suggesting otherwise, Rook is the sunshine out of those two…). Although there is a somewhat tragic backstory to Rook with him being excluded from the magic community after his grandmother died, leaving him lonely and with a feeling that he doesn’t belong, it’s not used to make the reader AND the other characters pity him endlessly. Sure, there’s empathy shown toward him and his background is a catalyst to Antonia accepting him in her office, but it all makes perfect sense and he’s not exactly sulking all the time because his life was oh-so-hard.
I also love Antonia for her excentric energy. She’s entertaining and fun to read, at the same time she sometimes gives off a threatening vibe. Fable, on the other hand, does not really stand out as much as the remaining characters – at least not to me – although they are presented as the exact opposite of Antonia and hence somehow her counterpart. Or maybe this is why they don’t stand out. They’re basically being overshadowed by the other characters.
Overall, the dynamics between the characters add to the entertainment of the story. There’s banter, there’s misunderstandings, there’s conflict, it’s fun.
The setting
While I didn’t really consider Legends and Lattes cozy fantasy because although the characters were fantastic, the setting didn’t radiate enough fantastic energy, I’d definitely consider Spell Bound cozy fantasy. Although not so much cozy because at some point it does get tense. But given the fact that it’s all about magic, breaking hexes and curses and making potions, the book definitely counts as fantasy. Oh and yeah, there’s an animal transformation that I absolutely LOVED.
Yet, the book is rather an urban fantasy, as it’s set in a big city, with modern devices (that don’t really mix with magic all too well, which adds a little extra entertainment) and an overall modern setting. That’s different from the other two books of F.T. Lukens I’ve read so far (So This Is Ever After and In Deeper Waters).
Overall opinion
I’ve said it already: After reading this book I can finally declare F.T. Lukens my favourite author. Their stories never disappoint. It’s exactly my kind of humour, I love the writing, I love the pacing, I love the characters. I am a big fan of the sweet, innocent romance without spice and it’s exactly the kind of fantastic settings I enjoy. Their books give me a warm, fuzzy feeling AND in case of Spell Bound, I did neither cry (which I did while reading In Deeper Waters. Oh how MUCH I cried!), nor did I want to constantly smash my head against the wall because of the idiots-to-lovers energy of the protagonists (which was the case in So This Is Ever After. And don’t get me wrong, I LOVE idiots to lovers and I am by no means opposed to stories with a massive lack of communication – on the contrary, it was part of why I enjoyed this book so much). It was just … smooth and cozy and very damn wholesome.
Also, I don’t know if I’ve finally settled with their writing or if the vocabulary was less complicated than in the other books, but I found into the story way quicker. With the other two books, I struggled way more with some of the words and phrases used (I might be on an advanced level, yet still a non-native speaker of English).
I am sure at the end of the year, Spell Bound will be on my list of favourite reads in 2024.
And now I am all excited about Otherworldly.