LIFE'S TOO SHORT FOR BOOKS LIKE THISDNF at 15%I was attracted to the idea of a feminist epic fantasy. However, the reality fell WAY short of my expectation. I was turned off almost from the beginning and just kept thinking 'when is it acceptable for me to throw this out?'👎 WHAT I DISLIKED 👎Incoherent: Perhaps this is because I have never read another of Gratton's books, but I found the beginning so confusing and incoherent with way too many people and places being strewn around that I couldn't g...

DNF at 4%The weird thing is that I was enjoying it, but not enough to invest 15 hours. I'm in a weird reading mood—I need light and fluffy, not something that will make me think and untangle.

If I’m being super picky, 4.75 because we got off to a rough start.

Actual Rating: 4.5 starsSlow, deliberate, deeply character-driven, and definitively queer, Lady Hotspur is a follow-up to The Queens of Innis Lear, with events occurring a few generations later. I would definitely recommend reading Queens of Innis Lear first, as I think this would be very confusing without that context. While I personally connected more to the characters in Queens (an all-time favorite for me), I think Lady Hotspur will be an important book for some readers. I especially recomme...

Lady Hotspur seems to be a quite polarising book so far. And by polarising I mean that if you check reviews on Goodreads the idea of it you get is of a huge, boring, horrible tome. I don’t quite agree with that, to be honest. Lady Hotspur is a genderbent retelling of Henry IV, mostly focused on Part I. It’s set in the same world as The Queens of Innis Lear, but in the kingdom of Aremoria, where a rebellion put Prince Hal’s mother on the throne and left Banna Mora, the previous heir, without a cr...

I am truly sad to say I read approximately fifty percent of this book and stopped. Perhaps if I'd read books before this about Innis Lear but honestly I'm really not sure. I can say the three females who dominate this story are interesting but i just sadly didn't feel pulled in or engaged enough to continue at this time. I absolutely hate stopping a book before the completion so perhaps will revisit when time is not so pressured. Its well written and has a unique slant so definitely very interes...

i dont even care that all the rating are so low, i have JUST read henry iv and im fucking DYING over this concept, when i say tessa gratton reads my MIND

It really won't be fair of me to write a review when I didn't even make it half way to the book. I've tried reading this book so many times but honestly, I made it till 43% and then I gave up.So yes I DNF-ed Lady Hotspur at 43%

I have finally completed this thing - and let me tell ya, it was worth it, but still has a lot of questionable decisions that made the book a lot less enjoyable than it could have been. It is basically a retelling of Shakespeare's Henry IV with heavy emphasis on part 1. It is gender bent and queered up, so there will be a lot of rep across the whole of the community. The chapters are broken into narratives mostly by the three main ladies - Banna Mora, Lady Hotspur, and Prince Hal. There are othe...

Holy shit.

Two stars from me because this was a struggle all the way through for me. I struggled to read the whole book when what I really wanted to do was put it down for good. I struggled to like any of the characters. I struggled to see how the story had advanced much when I finally finished it. Yes, gender bending, I got that and I was fine with it as something new or different or both but that Shakespeare play isn't a favorite of mine anyway. Yes, a lesbian love story, but that's not exactly earth sha...

Honestly I added this just because of the title.But it doesn't hurt that it's referencing Shakespeare.I don't really have to go back and read The Queens of Innis Lear do I?

4.5"If I take a true thing, and dance pretty words around it, the prettiness doesn't ruin the truth. A good story isn't a lie."For starters, my recommendation for Lady Hotspur would be to read The Queens of Innis Lear first because then you can truly enjoy the foreshadowing and references to past characters/ relationships. It’s a whole different experience with that background, and I can’t recommend it enough. Plus, you then have this background on the world, lore, and politics, so you’re unders...

Disclaimer: ARC via Netgalley. I wanted to love this book; truly I did. Gender swapped Henry IV and such, with lesbians? What’s not to love? Well, quite a bit it turns out. The main problem in this book isn’t the gender swapping or the world building. These are very well done, and it is clear that Gratton has done research and read the plays. The problem is simply the total lack of characterization and a large amount of detail that is totally unneeded. The book would have been better served by a...

Oh my God.A genderbent Henriad fantasy? With lesbians??GIVE IT TO ME NOW!!!!

I felt much the same about this as I did about The Queens of Innis Lear - beautifully written, but somehow lacking in substance. I was actually enjoying this one at the beginning, with the flirtations between Prince Hal and Lady Hotspur; it actually seemed like it was going somewhere. But then we returned to Innis Lear and star prophecies and sadly I just lost interest and ended up DNFing it. Still, the prose was really special, and it's a shame that it just seemed to lack in every other respect...

this is a spectacular sequel to The Queens of Innis Lear, which I adored, with similarly gorgeous language and imagery. think A Song of Ice and Fire but with less characters/convolution and more of an opportunity to get close to the characters emotionally (although I was more immediately drawn to the Innis Lear characters and it took me a bit to warm up to the ones in LH). brutal, beautiful, and compelling.

This audible version of the novel has been my constant companion through lock down. This is a sort of continuation of Queens of Innis Lear and I think that it would be rather impossible to follow some of the plot points without having read (or listened to) Queens first.While I was listening I had so many discording opinions on the novel that I really did not know whether I was going to end up liking it or not. In the end I did. The audio was excellent and I think added to the story.Loosely based...

Here I am, finally writing and uploading a review for this catastrophe 😳Thank you so much for the eARC to Macmillan Tor/Forge books, I just honestly struggled and struggled through almost every page of it, and probably should have DNFd without giving feedback.It was so long and gave so many minute, slow burning details into every single character's life, and I didn't find myself caring about any of it. Even after enjoying The Queens of Innis Lear at least a little bit, I could never get into Lad...

“But in the Third Kingdom a strong mother-line was respected, and for a decade now Celeda had gathered allies and woven her plans, always knowing she’d never be invited home. Knowing if she was to return, she would have to seize back her legacy.” Tessa Gratton had my attention as an incredible novelist with the first book I read by her, "The Queen of Innis Lear". As a huge Shakespeare enthusiast, a lover of female powerhouses in lead roles, and a devourer of books that are epic in scope, that ha...