A King's Trust (Heart-Mage Trilogy #1) by S.E. McPherson
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Queer Protagonists, Romantic Fantasy
Representation: Autistic bi/pansexual MC with ADHD, MLM love interest, M/M/F polyamory
PoV: Third-person, past-tense
ISBN: 9798992254327
Goodreads

Fantasy | Romance | LGBTQ+

The spare becomes the heir and, on his path to the throne, discovers magical intrigue, a secret society pulling political strings, and not one, but two loves of his life.

Highlights

~wait how DID the crown prince die
~fuck paperwork
~do NOT fuck your bodyguard
~heart-magic ftw
~a Useful Thing is indeed useful

True story: a little bit ago, I politely messaged someone to let them know this is NOT a romantasy blog (which is how they’d described Every Book a Doorway). I don’t even read romantasy! I’m definitely not out here trying to BOOST it!

…I may have to eat my words a little bit. Because my newest fave is romantasy, and I am absolutely here to boost the hells out of it.

King’s Trust caught my eye when I saw it was promising me polyamory and an extremely neurodivergent main character – an AuADHD one, in fact. Like me! And that day, I was having major brain-fog, and was hoping something more romancey might reach me through the murk. (I have noticed that romance is much easier for me to read than Epic Fantasy when my brain’s misbehaving.)

Friends, not only did it go full-on LIGHTHOUSE on my brain-fog, I didn’t move from dawn to dusk until I’d finished it!

Beau is the second-born prince, but is now the heir, his elder brother having just died. Unfortunately, Beau couldn’t be worse for the job; he’s spent the last dozen years living incognito far from all things royal, he has zero understanding of or patience for politicking, has no idea how anything works or how it’s run, and is completely lacking the relationships with his country’s nobles that a crown heir should have developed years ago. (He also has the difficulties any unmedicated ADHDer has when it comes to reams of complicated, boring paperwork.) The country’s only chance, as his parents see it, is for him to marry someone brilliant enough that she can run the kingdom for him. (‘She’ because, though this is a queernorm setting, royal marriages need to make little baby royals, which means a partner you can reproduce with. Probably a trans or nonbinary person with the right equipment would be acceptable too, but there aren’t any of the right rank around so it’s a moot point.)

The one person Beau has in his corner is his bodyguard, cheerful, supportive Elias – who also happens to be the only person to believe Beau will make a good king. Beau has been crushing on Elias for years – Elias was his bodyguard long before he was called back to be king-in-waiting – but given how wildly inappropriate it would be to express sexual interest in an employee, Beau has kept that to himself.

They wanted just enough excitement in their small talk to flavor it, not enough realism to spoil the taste.

Beau’s autism is the kind that gets dubbed ‘high-functioning’, but if you know what you’re looking for, it’s not subtle. There’s his complete ineptitude at Doing Politics, as well as his contempt for it; and there’s the black-and-white thinking, the not just refusal to ignore injustice but the inability to do so. A small but important sub-plot is his discovery that many nobles, when visiting the palace, assault the servants sexually, which he refuses to let stand. Obviously that makes me like him, but what I most appreciated was that this characteristic is held in conflict with his contempt for politicking – and that contempt is critiqued. Charging in like a bull in a china shop will only make things worse, even dangerous, for the people he’s trying to help. It’s not enough to be well-intentioned; it’s not enough to call out injustice. You have to do so intelligently. Speaking from personal experience: yeah, this is something autists have to learn, just as we have to unlearn any disdain for politicking. Being able to ‘play the game’ is not a bad thing, something we also get to see via Penny, the ex-fiance of Beau’s brother, who stands as foil and contrast to Beau for a lot of the book.

The plots build up, and braid together, slowly but precisely, with a neatness I found really impressive. Mysteries and questions start in the background, then gradually come to the fore, growing bigger and more urgent with every page turned. Beau’s brother died in a hunting accident, that’s not one of the mysteries – but something appalling is going on with the kingdom’s store of magical artefacts; someone has been masquerading as Beau via letter for quite some time, taking and paying bribes; and tensions are rising between the kingdom and its neighbour regarding a band of destructive renegades/cultish fanatics. There’s also smaller-scale issues, like Beau’s aforementioned need to find a spouse, the trainwreck that is his relationship with his parents, and his discovery that many nobles have been assaulting palace staff without repercussions. It could have made for a messy, over-full book where not every plot point got enough page-time, but instead King’s Trust feels so well-balanced! Yes, there’s a lot, but in a way that feels very believable and realistic: there are going to be a whole lot of things that need juggling if you abruptly become the crown heir! That makes perfect sense! And it helps convey how Much the whole situation is for Beau.

And–why are you looking at me like that?”

“I’m sorry, I can’t decide if that’s the most romantic thing I’ve ever heard or the most demented.”

I’ve seen a few critiques of the romance/s, but personally, I adored it/them. Beau’s relationship with Elias is wildly different from his relationship with Penny, aka Victoire Augusta Bridgette Penamour, aka the Duchess of Veritelutte. A minor spoiler re the polyamory aspect that might be a dealbreaker for some readers: View Spoiler »El and Penny share a wonderful mutual respect, and both are very invested in the other having a relationship with Beau, but at least in this book, they’re not romantically involved with each other. I honestly have no clue whether that’ll change over the course of the trilogy. « Hide Spoiler This in no way impacted my enjoyment, though. Possibly my favourite aspect of the romance is how the progression of the romantic arcs parallels the reveal or discovery of El and Penny’s full characters. Elias is not who Beau (and the reader) first think he is, and neither is Penny; not just in a sense of, they have more depth than we were initially aware of, but their core personalities are not what they at first appeared to be. And that was a really fun, fascinating discovery – or journey of discovery, that might be a more accurate way to put it. I rarely get very invested in romantic plotlines, but I wasn’t just invested here, I was urging the romances on in a way I don’t remember ever doing before – because I wanted to learn more about El and Penny! Because they are very cool characters, way more so than I thought at first! They both have LAYERS and I wanted them uncovered!

And yes, I shipped them. VERY HARD.

Worldbuilding-wise, King’s Trust doesn’t have the level of detail I usually prefer, but I didn’t feel the lack because of how vividly alive the characters were, and how focused the book kept me on the different plotlines. It doesn’t hurt that the final beats of the ending make it clear we’ll be learning a lot more about magic in this setting in the rest of the series – as long as the author follows through on that, I’ll be perfectly happy. (And a fair bit of worldbuilding that looked simplistic turned out not to be.) The prose isn’t the ornate, semi-purple kind that is my favourite, but it’s bright and quick and polished – there’s an addictive popcorn-quality to it, and since it kept me hooked during some of the WORST brain-fog I’ve had this year, I can confirm that it’s wonderfully easy to read.

Look, I loved this book. LOVED IT. I’m almost done with my second read of it, and I predict I’ll have read it several more times before we get the sequel. It’s one of those books that just makes you HAPPY. That makes you glitter inside – not (just) because of the romance, but because of some indefinable squee-factor I’ve never been able to name. I flapped my arms and kicked my feet for this one, friends, and I will do it again!

Come December, you’ll find it on my best-of-year list!

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