Book review: Rebecca Thorne – Can’t Spell Treason Without Tea

It’s been a while. Yes, I’m alive. Yes, life’s been busy. Anyway. I’ve been reading a lot recently, so I decided to come back with a book review of an absolutely lovely book I’ve read recently: Can’t Spell Treason Without Tea by Rebecca Thorne. I’ve made mistakes in connection to this book. Nope, reading it was definitely no mistake. But I’ll explain if you click the „Read More“ 🙂

Short info: WLW romance, nonbinary side character, potential queer side romance developing 

Hint: I’ve read the German translation published by Piper

The Plot

Can’t Spell Treason Without Tea is the opener of a queer fantasy series. The book tells the story of Reyna, member of the royal guard and protector of a fairly unpopular, somewhat cruel queen, and her partner Kianthe, the so called Arkandor – a very powerful magician. After once again preventing her queen to be assassinated, Reyna notices that her life means nothing to her actual employer. She decides that she is done with her job at the royal guard, that life must hold more in stock for her and that Kianthe’s and her dream of opening a book café somewhere far away from the palace sounds very attracting. So she flees from the royal palace and together with Kianthe she starts a new life in a small remote town where she hopes the royal guard won’t find her. Together they fulfill their dream and open a combined shop for books and tea, an idyllic, peaceful place. Unfortunately, their new home has a little problem: Dragons. They keep attacking the town for an unknown reason. While trying to hide from the queen, Reyna and Kianthe try to solve the mystery around the dragon attacks to protect their new home and its lovely neighbours. But the mission turns out to be more complicated than they thought…

The characters

With Reyna and Kianthe, the book has two badass strong female protagonists that are charming, humorous and loveable. I have to admit that in the early parts of the book, Reyna had a tendency to act like a character in some kind of teenage fanfiction by endangering herself while renovating their soon-to-be-shop with an open wound. However, throughout the book I grew very fond of Reyna’s strong, maybe slightly stubborn character and Kianthe’s horrible puns (since I was reading the German translation I wondered if they were just as bad – yet amazing – in the English version). There are also very sympathetic side characters: Kianthe has an adorable pet griffin called Visk that is perhaps one of my favourite characters of the books. Also the inhabitants of their newly chosen home are partly a little weird, yet absolutely adorable. Especially the two main „governing bodies“ in town can be frustrating at times, yet they also add a little humour to the story. However, since the book is the first part of the series, there’s not really much of a character development yet, some of them remain a little shallow and, as mentioned before, some of their actions seem so over the top and not thought through that it can be a little … off-putting at times.

My „mistake“

As I mentioned in the introduction, I might have made a mistake. I am not sure if it was one for real because I don’t have any comparison, but on one specific level it definitely was a major mistke: I bought the German copy. I bought the book with a gift card in a small book store in a small town that only had the German copy and I thought „Well, can’t make much of a difference, right?“ … Oh if only I had known that Piper, the German publisher, seems to not really plan on translating the other parts of the series. I have no other explanation why not even the second part, which has been released in English in 2024, is not even announced yet. There isn’t a single sign anywhere on the book horizon that Piper will release the other three books in German. Or that anyone will! Pretty annoying.

Furthermore, I am easily distracted by typos, errors and the like and especially in the first half, the German translation came with a few mistakes that threw me off-track. Mostly typos, in one case the wrong name was used.

And I was also wondering about the pronouns used by the nonbinary character of the book in English. German is a little difficult when it comes to gender neutral pronouns, there’s nothing our language offers itself, so all gender neutral pronouns in German are neo pronouns. In the German version, hen/hem was used. Maybe somebody can enlighten me on the pronouns used in English, but while they/them (and a ‚Germanised‘ version dey/dem) is indeed pretty much neutral to me, hen/hem, due to it looking too much like he, destroyed the non-binary vibe for me and I immediately had a male-read character in mind. That’s a me-problem though. I believe that hen/hem is probably derived from Scandinavian pronouns, but … yeah. It was a little tricky for me I’d say.

My overall opinion

First of all, this book kinda reminded me of Legends and Lattes by Travis Baldree, which is perhaps unsurprising as, as far as I’ve read, Rebecca Thorne was inspired by this book to write her own cosy fantasy. The overall idea of a warrior that becomes weary of killing people and decides to open a shop instead is the same and some of the „shop mechanics“ feel similar somehow. One thing that I prefer about Can’t Spell Treason Without Tea though is that I personally felt … less bored. Legends and Lattes was indeed very much on the cosy side of fantasy, with a strong focus on cosy. In my review I think I mentioned that I felt like the story was dragging on a bit too much because there was hardly anything happen and that I had mainly enjoyed the book because of its characters and not necessarily because of the plot. Can’t Spell Treason Without Tea holds a little more action – and a little less cosy.

Like … yes, the overall idea of running away from your job as a royal guard to open a shop for books and tea sounds very cosy at first. However, the amount of extensive world building makes the book rather High Fantasy. You are thrown into a completely new world with a new map, different countries, different towns, different peoples, its own politics etc. And it really takes some time to get accustomed to that. At the beginning of the book, I personally felt overwhelmed because I was thrown into this unknown world without any further explanation and so far, the book has not given me any kind of … sufficient explanation why the queen (and all her predecessors) is cruel, cold and unempathetic. I wonder if there’ll be one in the rest of the series. I mean … a different one than „It’s for the plot, because it’s kinda nice to have a queen that is so cruel and cold that everyone in this world despises her“. Also it really takes a while until the concept of the Arkandor is explained and so far I still don’t think that I’ve really grasped the politics and the magic of this world.

So if you expect cosy fantasy: This book is not it. It’s rather sapphic high fantasy and you really need to be willing to dive into an absolutely unknown world that will play a bigger role than the world in Legends and Lattes.

Anyway … I love fantasy, I don’t really have many issues with high fantasy and I thought Legends and Lattes was a little boring. The action in Can’t Spell Treason Without Tea spoke much more to me and kept me well entertained throughout the entire book. Nevertheless, I have mentioned before that some parts of the story felt very much like fanfiction written by a teen. There’s sometimes a tad too melodramatic touch in the story when Reyna or Kianthe risk their lives and it’s super dramatic and you’re supposed to worry if they will make it and it’s just soooooooooooo dramatic and they care so much for each other and … I don’t know. During the renovation of the barn Reyna and Kianthe wanted to turn into their shop I was this close to just tossing the book into the corner and I said to my partner „Why does this read like a fanfiction written by a 13 year old girl that soooo badly wants to be recognised by the love of her life?“ It was annoying. Very much so. But it got better. Until a similar thing happened with Kianthe and I couldn’t stop myself from rolling my eyes.

Other than that … the story is interesting and it really caught me and I definitely want to read the rest of the series. As an opener it was appealing enough for me to wonder how the story continues. I gave it four stars because despite my issues with the over-dramatic „sacrificing“ protagonists I thought it was entertaining and I wanted to read on. The whole dragon attack storyline is very intriguing and I want a) the mystery solved and b) the implied beginning relationship of two side characters to deepen.

So if you like high fantasy with a sapphic romance (and no spice, to my personal delight!), this book might be something for you. If you’re looking for something cosy, this book will disappoint you because it’s definitely not peaceful and calm enough to count as cosy fantasy.