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Son in Sorrow (An Intimate History of the Greater Kingdom #2)

by MeiLin Miranda (Goodreads Author)

4.71 of 5 stars 4.71 · rating details · 48 ratings · 15 reviews

In this sequel to Lovers and Beloveds, MeiLin Miranda continues the saga of the Antremont family, kings of one continent, would-be emperors of another, and subjects to the whims of gods.

For a thousand years, the trapped, immortal Teacher has carefully planned escape. Now it all depends on one young man whose heart is tested like never before.

Estranged from his father, Prin...more

Kindle Edition, 390 pages

Published March 28th 2012 by Sans Culotte Press

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KBR Best Indie Books 2012 (Scifi/fantasy)

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Apr 18, 2012 Matthew Rogers rated it 5 of 5 stars

Okay I'd admit while I don't use a kindle or anything, I decided to buy the online version of this so I could read the pdf format version because I've read the story before and I cannot wait until July of next year to get the full story.

Anyway, I liked this. Though yes I've read the first one before hand, if I didn't then I be lost of course. The only thing that bugged me that when it came to the really minor characters, I couldn't picture them easily in my head or tell them a part. Still, a goo...more

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Apr 10, 2012 Dinique Brooks rated it 5 of 5 stars

I loved this book SO much. So much that I'm regretting purchasing it instead of sticking with the serialization. Because at least then... at least then, I wouldn't have to deal with the wait for the next book in the series as opposed to waiting for the next portion of the serial which now that I think about it, would certainly not have been as bad.

The story is very detailed with a lovely background that pulls you in and makes it easy to understand how things work. Granted, reading the first book...more

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Mar 31, 2012 Keryl Raist rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: indie-book-review

A while back, I reviewed An Intimate History of the Greater Kingdom: Lovers and Beloveds. And I really enjoyed it. It was a glorious mix of epic politics and an erotic coming of age that just made me happy all the way through. Did I have some quibbles? Sure, but they were minor, and the whole thing was just a lovely book.

Recently, MeiLin Miranda sent me book two in the series, Son in Sorrow, and I'm happy to say, I love this one. Lovers and Beloveds was a good, solid, first book, and Son in Sorr...more A while back, I reviewed An Intimate History of the Greater Kingdom: Lovers and Beloveds. And I really enjoyed it. It was a glorious mix of epic politics and an erotic coming of age that just made me happy all the way through. Did I have some quibbles? Sure, but they were minor, and the whole thing was just a lovely book.

Recently, MeiLin Miranda sent me book two in the series, Son in Sorrow, and I'm happy to say, I love this one. Lovers and Beloveds was a good, solid, first book, and Son in Sorrow is even better.

These books cover so much and so deeply they are hard to categorize, but I'll try. These are the stories of what it takes to go from being a boy to a man to a king.There are scads of boy-turns-into-man stories out there, and usually they just scratch the surface, as if making a few hard decisions and killing monsters is enough to do the job. It's not. And Miranda does a brilliant job showing this.

These stories deal with not just the idea of making hard decisions, but also the soft ones, the ones that look easy on the surface but ripple outward over the years. In Lovers and Beloved the joys, erotic and emotional, of love were studied. In Son in Sorrow, the pain of love lost, jealousy, and the desire for revenge are on the menu.

This is love bound by the larger world filled with political intrigue. It's not enough that Temmin, now twenty, has to sort himself out, but he must do it on a grand stage as the Heir of a mighty kingdom, in the eyes of everyone and with scores of men out to plot his downfall.

Like Lovers, Son in Sorrow is filled with first rate world building. This reads as a history of a real world, just one you've never met before. Like Lovers, the story in story technique is used to great effect as a way to help young Temmin understand what he needs to know to help grasp at least some of what is going on around him.

Unlike Lovers, Son in Sorrow spends more time with the secondary characters. Plot threads only hinted at in Lovers get picked up, taken along for a quick tantalizing visit, and then left to germinate. Characters who flitted in and out of Lovers get their own screen time, and I'm eagerly awaiting to see where they go. A few new ones pop up as well, and seeing how well Miranda has done with the first two books, I'm happily anticipating and debating where they'll come in later in the story and how.

This is an author who does her homework. The Greater History is a complex and EPIC tale, and so far, more than 600 pages into the series we're still meeting new characters, learning new history, and setting up what is going to be an absolute corker of a tale. Yet, with the fact that this is all set up for a greater story, the bits we've already gotten do not feel unimportant or rushed. There's no sense of the author biding her time, just waiting for all the characters to get into place. This planning for the grand show to come is just as important, and interesting, as what I hope will be heading our way in the future.

So, that said, out you get for a copy of Lovers and Beloveds and Son in Sorrow. Read them! Then bookmark Miss Miranda's page so that you can get in on the next one as soon as it's out. It will be well worth your time. (less)

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Mar 29, 2012 Kate Sherrod rated it 5 of 5 stars

MeiLin Miranda likes to use an amusing tagline for her fiction, announcing that she writes "fantasy with all the good parts left in," and it's quite apropos. The book for which she is perhaps best known to date (how I discovered her, at any rate) is the first set in this "Intimate History of the Greater Kingdom", Lovers and Beloveds, had lots and lots and lots of "good parts" in its two entertwined storylines, an arousing and disturbing and graceful read if ever there was one. And yes, I'm talki...more MeiLin Miranda likes to use an amusing tagline for her fiction, announcing that she writes "fantasy with all the good parts left in," and it's quite apropos. The book for which she is perhaps best known to date (how I discovered her, at any rate) is the first set in this "Intimate History of the Greater Kingdom", Lovers and Beloveds, had lots and lots and lots of "good parts" in its two entertwined storylines, an arousing and disturbing and graceful read if ever there was one. And yes, I'm talking about sex, which is treated both frankly and delicately and in some detail in this series.

But what she could equally call it is "the feminine side of fantasy," for while these stories are set in a more or less typical epic fantasy world* -- gods are real as is magic, big burly men wear shiny armor and fight with swords, feudalism is in full effect -- but Ms. Miranda is more interested in the lives of the women who are kept in keeps and castles until they're useful to cement alliances or birth babies or look good on a nobleman's arm, even as these books seem primarily concerned with the life and education of a young man, Prince Temmin, heir to a vast kingdom (his education as we see it is focused on teaching him the stereotypically "feminine" qualities of empathy, compassion, attention to small detail, and oh, yes, good sex, which in Ms. Miranda's world does not happen without those other qualities. Let's hear it for MeiLin!).

Above all, we are prompted to consider the consequences of sex, and how women bear the worst of them in pretty much every society, even a fantasy one in which great goddesses actually walk among their worshippers through taking over willing "Embodiments" -- the many roles of woman, of lover, mother, teacher and healer may be sacred, but the actual women playing these roles still get treated pretty badly.

In Lovers and Beloveds, we were pulled into the story of Prince Temmin as a young man, as he fell for and doggedly pursued the woman who served as one of the Embodiments of the Lovers, twin deities, male and female, who preside over love and sexuality -- meaning, he was after a woman who is off limits -- right into her Temple, where he decided against his father's most strident wishes to enter as a Supplicant, a sort of high level lay priest (there was apparently a prophecy that if the Heir ever joined the Lovers' Temple, the monarchy would end in revolution and revolt, something no aristocracy wants to happen). As he decided to buck his father and the rest of society's expectations, he was magically immersed in the sad-yet-lovely story of some distant ancestors, a dethroned king and a cruelly enchanted princess whose love ultimately triumphed and whose experiences helped guide Temmin into deciding to go for it.

Alas, no decision made by one in his position is without consequences, and so he becomes the titular Son in Sorrow of this second volume (that title guides the reader's thoughts down a melancholy path as the story takes hold, and this is no accident), close to the Embodiment yet never further away even when he gets to sleep with her, enduring the icy disapproval of his father, and mostly out of contact with his mother and sisters, whose own anguished affairs threaten at times to dominate his tale -- even when a man is center stage in this Intimate History, he is defined by his relationships to women, even when he rides out to battle, as evidenced in the ancestral story Temmin is immersed this time around, this one a royal bastard whose mother bounced from kingdom to kingdom until the grieving ruler of one of Tremont's enemies married her and made her troubles even worse.

These works are often compared to George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire, and for good reason, but I find the comparison sells these Intimate Histories short: I find them to be superior works in many respects. Miranda may not write battle scenes as well as Martin, though she is no slouch in that department, but her understanding of and compassion for her characters is far greater, her magical and theological conceits better thought out and more thematically and aesthetically consistent, her insights into the human psyche keener. Male readers may dislike how her male characters are circumscribed by her females, but then, that is the whole point, for the whole nature of these books is to tell the "unknown" stories of royal mistresses and jilted lovers and illegitimate children even as they detail the coming of age of a Crown Prince whose very existence is owed just as much to the suffering -- and triumphs -- of these women as to the mighty kings and princes (and bastard sons) who make up his male lineage.

I didn't want this book to end but found myself racing to the finish nonetheless and now I find myself grateful indeed that Miranda releases her fiction in serialized doses on her website before formally publishing it. I first encountered her Intimate History this way, but then held off for the second novel until this volume saw formal publication**. I'm pretty sure I'll just be haunting her website again for more, though. Patience was never really one of my virtues.

*A lot of readers have compared this world to Victorian England, but I kept thinking of Austria. The Antremonts (the royal family of this series) made me think more of a polytheist Hapsburg clan than of the early Windsors. Let's say, the Hapsburgs had they and their empire been colonized an an early date by the Goa'uld, for that is what this setting's polytheism most reminds me of.

**Not that I totally had to wait; Miranda is a personal friend and gave me an advanced review copy of this book when I wheedled her into it. She's nice like that. Try that with George R.R. Martin, kiddies!(less)

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Mar 31, 2012 Lauren rated it 4 of 5 stars

I was very much looking forward to reading this book. This one follows Temmin as he serves in Lovers Temple, and the new set of challenges he faces during those two years. Carefully meshed in with that story is the tale of his ancestor, Temmin the Third. I really like the idea of a prince learning the real, gritty, non-textbook version stories of his past. The lessons sure seem to stick more. In this novel Temmin is learning how to act more like a future king, deal with falling in love with the...more

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Mar 31, 2012 Manoki rated it 5 of 5 stars

Did you love the MISTS OF AVALON? Meilin Miranda's Intimate History series (of which SON IN SORROW is Book #2) is written in a similar way and takes place in a similar setting. Although Avalon is medieval England and the Intimate History is in a fantasy world like England the early 1800's, the writing is similarly captivating and the perspective is similarly about the women behind and around a young king/prince.

I have trouble putting Meilin Miranda's books down, they are so captivating. If you...more

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Jun 23, 2012 M.K. Hobson rated it 5 of 5 stars

A wonderful sequel to "Lovers and Beloveds," "Son in Sorrow" plays out across a much larger canvas, both in space and time. This book's many characters, plots and subplots gives it an incredible feeling of richness. But even though I found this book more complex and layered than its predecessor, these different threads are woven together with consummate skill. The sex scenes (which the author always handles beautifully) are fewer and further between than in the previous book, but that's a natura...more

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Apr 29, 2012 Amy rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: fantasy, favorites

I could not put this book down! It is the first one I have ever read completely on the computer.

An excellent sequel to the first book! I don't want to give away any spoilers, so I just want to say stuff happens and Temmin grows up even more. I absolutely love how the book is written where past events Temmin learns from a magical book gives him the knowledge to get through his current conflicts. You definitely should read the first book, Lovers and Beloveds, before diving into this one.

I am alre...more

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Nov 20, 2012 Kara-karina rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: on-the-shelf

4.5/5
I remember how much I loved the first book in this series, Lovers & Beloveds. With its sexual heat and vast world-building it strongly reminded me of Jacqueline Carey. However, Son in Sorrow is a much darker book, more in tune with realistic fantasy by George Martin.

I've talked about the project that turned into this series. Meilin writes serialised fiction, so both book #1 and book #2 were crowd-funded, everything was done professionally from art to proofreading and editing. You reall...more

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Dec 03, 2012 TheFountainPenDiva rated it 5 of 5 stars

I'm givng author MeiLin Miranda for her shout-out to Black Phoenix Alchemy Labs, one of my favorite purveyors of unique fragrance potions. My favorites are Lucy's Kiss, Perversion (go figure), Whip and Titania.

Okay, onto the book. Son in Sorrow is book two of the History of the Greater Kingdoms and puts us right back into all the wonderful scheming, heresies, and political intrigue that is one of the hallmarks of great fantasy. There's also the incarnations of the gods--Nerr and Neya--and their...more

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May 18, 2012 Heidi rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: fantasy, read2012

can't wait for the third!

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Apr 01, 2012 Najela rated it 5 of 5 stars

5! 5! A million times 5!

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Apr 05, 2012 Clare K. R. rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2012, best-of-2012, fantasy, kindle-books, weblit, queer, 2012-pubbed

BRB SOBBING

WHERE IS BOOK 3 WANT RIGHT NOW

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Jul 23, 2012 Jean Konieczny rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: won-books

Ok... now I'm hooked.
Gotta get the first and third now!!

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May 09, 2013 MeiLin Miranda added it · (Review from the author)

Shelves: my-writing

I wrote it, so, y'know... :)

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Apr 20, 2013 Katharine marked it as family-owns · review of another edition

Apr 09, 2013 Melanie rated it 5 of 5 stars

Mar 15, 2013 Jim Zoetewey rated it 5 of 5 stars

Mar 08, 2013 Senna Black rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: het, slash, plotty, naughty

Mar 05, 2013 Wahiaronkwas David is currently reading it

Feb 20, 2013 Cecilia marked it as to-read

Feb 17, 2013 Ana marked it as to-read

Feb 16, 2013 Sarah added it

Recommended to Sarah by: http://www.meilinmiranda.com/intimate-history

Feb 08, 2013 Mac marked it as to-read

Shelves: scifi-fantasy

Jan 07, 2013 Nancy rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: ebook

Jan 01, 2013 Hybridhopes marked it as to-read

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Nov 14, 2012 Annetta Ribken rated it 5 of 5 stars

Nov 17, 2012 Emily Kauffman rated it 4 of 5 stars

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About MeiLin Miranda

MeiLin Miranda came back from the dead to write books. In 2006, she suffered a cardiac arrest, and realized it was high time to get on with writing fiction after 30-plus years of nonfiction.

Currently, she works on the fantasy series "An Intimate History of the Greater Kingdom" and the online fantasy western serial "Scryer's Gulch," and is a co-creator of the shared steampunk fantasy series "The Dr...more

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Books by MeiLin Miranda

An Intimate History of the Greater Kingdom, Book One: The Tale of Two Kingdoms

Scryer's Gulch Episodes 1-10: Annabelle Arrives

The Machine God (The Drifting Isle Chronicles #3)

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Son in Sorrow (An Intimate History of the Greater Kingdom #2)

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