Review of “Lord of the Last Heartbeat” by May Peterson

Lord of the Last Heartbeat is the debut novel from writer, essayist and editor May Peterson and the first in the The Sacred Dark series. A remarkable blending of fantasy, paranormal romance, history and mystery, all with great care applied to the handling and portrayal of trauma and queer themes in a story that is in turns horrifying, joyful, sad, and absolutely adorable. A fantastic debut that promises lots of greatness to come. Definitely highly recommended.  

Stop me. Please.

Three words scrawled in bloodred wine. A note furtively passed into the hand of a handsome stranger. Only death can free Mio from his mother’s political schemes. He’s put his trust in the enigmatic Rhodry—an immortal moon soul with the power of the bear spirit—to put an end to it all.

But Rhodry cannot bring himself to kill Mio, whose spellbinding voice has the power to expose secrets from the darkest recesses of the heart and mind. Nor can he deny his attraction to the fair young sorcerer. So he spirits Mio away to his home, the only place he can keep him safe—if the curse that besieges the estate doesn’t destroy them both first.

In a world teeming with mages, ghosts and dark secrets, love blooms between the unlikely pair. But if they are to be strong enough to overcome the evil that draws ever nearer, Mio and Rhodry must first accept a happiness neither ever expected to find.

I suppose the first thing to clarify for anybody reading the description and blurb above is that this is not a ‘romantasy’ novel in the way it gets used these days, which seems largely to be ‘a fantasy novel with romantic elements.’ This is a Fantasy Romance, both uppercase, by which I mean that it complies with the RWA requirements for a romance novel, in that the romance is both central to the plot, and the romance ends with a Happily Ever After / Happily For Now. That’s not a spoiler, there’s a guarantee from the publisher on the cover saying so.

It’s important, I think, to know that going in, in a sort of Princess Bride “She doesn’t get eaten by the eels at this time” way because if not, oh boy, the number of blood pressure spikes this story would have caused not knowing whether Mio and Rhodry were both actually going to make it.

There’s a lot of trauma winding its way through this story. Between Mio’s relationship with his mother, Rhodry’s relationship with his curse, and the fact that they’re both just constantly afraid everything is going to go wrong at pretty much any moment, it would be easy to get lost in cynicism or sadness about the fate of anybody who just wants to be able to feel the kind of love they truly want, safely. And there are plenty of obstacles on the way to that HEA/HFN ending, but one thing Peterson went far out of her way to ensure was that no element of their romance added to that trauma.

I’ve seen some negative reviews calling out, I almost hate to utter the words for fear of summoning their users, a “problematic age gap” mostly on the grounds that Rhodry knew who Mio was from a younger age than he is in the story, and was a fan of his singing / maybe had some feelings for him then. But like…there’s a scene where Rhodry calls out what I recall was either the first, or one of the first times he saw Mio sing and loved his performance, and his reaction is along the lines of “So long ago? I was only 18 when I sang that.” So that line alone establishes both that he was already 18 at the time, and that he’s older than that now, that it seems like a long time ago. I don’t think Mio’s age is ever outright stated, though I may be misremembering, but it’s pretty clear he’s in his mid to late 20s, and Rhodry has been a ghost/spirit guy for a while now, but definitely doesn’t read like he’s “old” in any way. I’d put him at like early 30s?

I think people just latched onto the attention put on their size difference, and the way people who -aren’t Rhodry- infantilize Mio, and just decided he must also be doing it? Regardless, instead of seeming in any way predatory or inappropriate, I found their romance to be incredibly sweet, and full of affection, consideration, and above all, the level of consent you can only display by both people apologizing profusely for their first kiss, each thinking they had crossed some line on the other that they shouldn’t have, because they were so worried THEY were the ones overstepping doing something they both very clearly wanted and enjoyed. Their struggle was believing that the other one could possibly feel the same way about them, not the other way around.

Romance aside, there’s also plenty more to recommend about Lord of the Last Heartbeat. Peterson has done a great job creating a setting that feels properly positioned historically for the level of technology they have, without giving in to the temptation to give a bunch of exposition about the various nation-states and their politics. The story isn’t about that, and basically all of it takes place on one estate, so there wasn’t a need to know more than what was required to shape the setting around the characters. 

Everything there makes it easy to extrapolate a lot of the setting if you a) want to and b) know enough about history to know how to. All the criticism I saw expressing confusion about the setting just read to me as people who don’t know enough to read between those lines, which is fine, since you don’t actually need to do any of that to follow and enjoy the story, but criticizing it on those grounds sort of rubs me the wrong way. Imagine suggesting that one of the characters having a Spanish sounding name and another having an Italian sounding name is confusing in terms of setting. Like…you can walk from one of those places to the other, plenty of people would have done so?

A similar approach is taken with the magic in this world. Enough is explained for you to understand basically what’s going on and what the limits are, without feeling the need to go brandosando on it. There’s a phrase used in terms of describing the difference between stated intentions of a system and what the system is actually used for, “The purpose of a system is what it does.” And I feel like there’s a lot of good in applying that kind of thing to magic systems in fiction as well. It’s there as a vehicle to further the plot, and to enable characters to interact with the results of its use. There’s nothing gained spending a bunch of time describing exactly what it can or cannot do, because you can just look at the outcomes. What it does is what it can do, what it doesn’t is what it can’t, or it probably would have.

This does, though, segue into pretty much my sole criticism of this book. Without getting into spoilers, there is an event that occurs which introduces a disability into the story. It’s obvious that this disability will make things complicated and difficult for the protagonists. Time is spent dwelling on the fact that it will make things complicated and difficult, feelings are felt about the ways in which it makes things complicated and difficult, and then after all of that, an unexpected thing happens magically that completely removes the complications and difficulties.

I’m not really sure what I’d say about how else this should have played out. The symbolism and intention behind what happens is very good and very important to the plot and the journey of that character, and not bypassing the practical difficulties caused by it would have made trying to actually write the rest of the story be needlessly complicated for no real gain literarily, but still, it’s just a hint of deus ex machina that irked me a little.  

As criticisms go, it’s incredibly minor and doesn’t detract at all from the enjoyment of this story. I could definitely say a lot more if I were going to start spoiling things, but I try my best not to talk about anything that isn’t early setup, or in the blurb, so I’ll have to refrain.

Regardless, one of the best debuts I’ve read in a very long time, and I’m looking forward to reading the rest of this series. The Immortal City and The Calyx Charm are already published and available in all the usual places. The blurbs make them sound like this is less a trilogy and more of a series of novels in a shared setting, so if the description of one jumps out at you more than others, it seems to me at least that you could jump in anywhere. I’ve heard so many good things about The Calyx Charm that I can’t wait to see how the world and setting develop.

At the time of writing this review, I’m on my 120th book of the year, and given my practice of counting long series as “one entry” in my ranked list, Lord of the Last Heartbeat has come in 3rd, and a very solid 5/5 on all the various places that force me to apply a star rating. This is a great story and you should buy it and read it.  

Liked this review? Want to support the creation of more content? Consider supporting my Patreon, even 1
dollar per review/article can make a huge difference!
https://www.patreon.com/StrangeCurrencies
Or if you’d rather support this content as a one time affair, buy me a ko-fi!
https://www.ko-fi.com/strangecurrencies