The High King's Golden Tongue

Absolutely lovely slow burn romance with a wonderful cast of secondary characters. I adored the group of friends, but I especially loved Sarrica and Lesto's friendship because they've got that wonderful needling, bantering thing going on that only the best of friends can do.

The only thing that's kind of odd is there almost seems to be a third gender. Not exactly separate from the other two, but...there's a couple of instances where two people of the same gender have biological children. I have the feeling that the author was trying to do away with the need of having one man and one women to procreate - thereby getting rid of things like the (male) High King needing a female consort to produce heirs. This opens up plenty of chances to not have arranged marriages always be between two people of the opposite gender. I do like the idea, as odd as it is (maybe that's why I like it) - but it's never explained. I don't know if they were supposed to be trans or intersex (is that the right term?) or if we don't even currently have a proper way to refer to them. It would have been easy to just give a little mention of how this is possible (he was born in the wrong body - for example) but there's no mention at all. This would have been the perfect opportunity to delve deeper into this culture and this world and it was just a little disappointing to me that it's all left up to reader to try to figure out how this is even possible.