Another Navah book. This one wins on the ending. When I started it was a 3, if only because it began slowly and there were too many diacritical marks over names early on, but then I got into it and then the plot kicked in and then there was a grumpy yet attractive and iron-willed dude in a house and, well, I DO have my weak spots and I like seeing this story told well and without making me cringe at the toxic masculinity. Which this book totally achieves.
I just...get through the names and stop trying to pronounce them in your head unless you speak Gaelic and it’ll pick up and not let you go pretty quickly.
Also, there wasn’t enough Caër, but it’s okay. Specifically Caër and Innisth, but it wasn't their story although I feel like the universe could use more non-traditional marriages that appear to be working great in fantasy novels.
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Also, I have a think I'm supposed to be writing, so let's get back to the whole "grumpy, yet attractive powerful man" archetype.
I love this archetype and I think this archetype is...not easy to do well and sometimes problematic even when it is. The thing about liking it is that I read it when it isn't done well TOO and just grump a little more. The fantasy in this kind of story, and it's a familiar trope that I've gone on about in the past, is that you can take a man who is emblematic of mastery and master him. (If this sounds a lot like the way people talk about hounds, horses, and Katherine from the Taming of the Shrew...you're not wrong.) The obvious--to me--archetypal version of this story is Jane Eyre. Jane's entire arc is wresting control of her life back from Rochester, letting the world punish him for his sins and coming back in a position of power where she can give him everything he once wanted to give her. Most versions don't break their male heroes quite so thoroughly and you have the fantasy of the incredibly powerful man (again, see animal training) who is leashed/held at bay by the woman.
OBVIOUSLY, this is going on in Neumeier's book, but I think Neumeier, aside from writing a good version of this story (which, I mean, if you dislike this trope, the fact that it's done well here isn't exactly a selling point), also deconstructs it. The whole thing with the Immanent Powers becomes a way to talk about lineage and inheritance: temperament, upbringing, nature vs. nurture, etc. It externalizes the dangerous impulses that would make Innisth too unlikeable while framing them as a familial burden in a way that resonates with the way that abuse gets passed down through families. Kehera, on the other hand, grows up with a kinder Immanent Power, one from a family that, for generations, taught it to be good people. This is what you inherit from a stable, loving family. Power grounded in stability and love.

Neumeier does this FASCINATING thing where, for all that Kehera masters Innisth, Innisth submits to her brother as king, which makes explicit the whole subordination of baser impulses, but without the familiar gender dynamic. Tirovay calls into question the whole approach of leashing power through love by taking away a significant amount of Innisth's power and becoming the dominant power in the region. There isn't quite enough here to read this as an argument between toxic and non-toxic masculinity that Tiro wins...but almost.

I've almost convinced myself that this is a story about detoxifying masculinity, but then again...
I love that it's a romance. I appreciate the utter delight that is Innisth and I get his appeal and also there is something deeply uncomfortable with who we see as redeemable and what kind of behavior deserves redemption. Some of this is, I think, an attempt to negotiate between toxic and attractive masculinity, while I also think there is a degree of fantasy to it - having power over the powerful is a compelling fantasy, but is it one borne out of the delegitimization of powerful women where I can't have power, but I can have the love of a powerful man who does what I want...or is it merely a thing that some people find attractive and others do not and, you know, whatever bumps your grind? And I think untangling those two--because it is probably both--is an important part of thinking about these stories. And I think Neumeier is, to some degree, doing that here with the use of magic and the threat of mastery as evil even as she's also promoting it with the love story and that's sort of the point of a good book. It's not supposed to be didactic about complex issues.