This is the first Ava Reid novel I’ve disliked, and I’ve read her entire backlist. 

 

Up until Lady Macbeth, Ava Reid had a flawless track record with me. There are very few fantasy authors who can match her when it comes to beautiful prose matched with fantastical worldbuilding. Her love of powerful female protagonists is always a huge bonus for me, too. 

 

It’s not that Lady Macbeth lacks beautiful prose, because there is beautiful prose in this book. It’s not as plentiful as in Reid’s other books, but there is a sparseness to this book that I feel might be part and parcel of the overall aesthetic for the story and so it might be on purpose. The worldbuilding is fantastic, actually, but I have a feeling it probably doesn’t feel like it if you aren’t familiar with a lot of aspects of medieval Europe. Reid definitely made a choice to write this without simplifying anything for readers who might want things explained more plainly to them. 

 

Where I came up short in this book was in the protagonist and just the book as a whole. 

 

I understand where the author was coming from and (likely) where she was trying to get to with Lady Macbeth and this story. Most of what I came away with was about lost girlhoods, weaponizing female beauty, fetishizing certain types of women, men taking credit for a woman’s labor, men blaming women for their shortcomings, male anger and pride, man’s sense of entitlement, misogyny, how scared men are of the idea of women having the least amount of power, and how everyone has a breaking point. Even the most docile-behaving women. The issue I had is the story managed to touch lightly on all of these things but somehow also seemed to never get to the point about any of them. It skimmed lightly over all of these talking points like it was a buffet and ended up with an overloaded plate full of unresolved issues. 

 

This is where my overall disappointment comes into play: It was just so scattershot. Have a sip of daddy issues. Take a nibble of my love for animals. I’m into being queen. I’m not into being queen. I’m cunning but I’m not. I’m not just a girl but I’m totally just a girl. Here’s some beautiful prose, but here’s a whole lot of boring. 

 

It’s an inconsistent book with an inconsistent protagonist and an inconsistent plot. I’d like to say I don’t regret finishing it, but I do. I wish I had DNFd it. But I thought I owed Ava Reid the finish. 

 

I was provided a copy of this title by Netgalley and the author. All thoughts, opinions, views, and ideas expressed herein are mine and mine alone. All reviews three stars or under do not appear on my social media. Thank you. 

 

File Under: Fantasy/Romantasy/Historical Fantasy/Literary Fiction/Standalone Novel