No longer king and queen, not warriors striving with all that they were to battle the future, but two candles lighting the dark.

The prince-heir of Instanolde is cursed to drown in a desert for the brutality of his father. His skin and muscles will slowly turn to water until nothing else is left. I was intrigued by a magical curse that transmits by touch and turns the skin of those affected transparent, and it’s what mainly kept me reading.

I had various grievances with this book that I believe could be easily fixed with a couple more editing passes. Similes were overdone and overused, making them too long and breaking the pace and immersion.

Dialogue doesn’t make much sense at times, with characters changing their minds midway without new information presented, or answering incongruously to the current conversation.

The story opens with the death of King Cormek and the two main characters dealing with their grief while having to prepare for a war. I wish we had had more time to meet Cormek so we could understand their loss. I think where Queen of Shifting Sands misses the mark is bringing out any type of emotion. Other characters’ deaths feel inconsequential to the reader because there’s no emotional investment in them.

The pace is slow. Unjustifiedly so. The book isn’t overly atmospheric, nor do we get deep character exploration. We don’t get much character development; Lystra expresses animosity toward Elerek in their few brief encounters to do a 180° in one night when they finally talk.

I love disability representation. Elerek uses a wheelchair after a bad-treated plague (due to his curse) left his legs unable to support him. The effects of the curse he and others suffer include limb numbing and sudden cold, treating the curse as another type of disability. It was so close to being well-treated, but there were a few instances when I wasn’t sure how to feel about it.

Despite Lystra calling Elerek strong and claiming to love the people of Instanolde, she makes a couple of ableist and classist remarks, which makes her hard to like. Everyone seems to be stricken by her, anyway. She finds more kinship to cardants (large reptiles used as mounts) than other people, even equating them to citizens. I could relate to liking animals more than people, but I couldn’t care less about cardants.

There’s a pre-established relationship with Elerek (which is promptly ended for the sake of duty), but their interactions lack the intimacy to be believable. Soon after claiming he loves her, he’s pining after Lystra and deeming her “the most beautiful girl in Instanolde“.

I love everything star-related and the main god in this world is called the Starkindler, giving chance for many star references. Some of these were used for different purposes, which cheapened them.

Elerek and Lystra are painted as star-crossed lovers (pun-intended) and their touch can put the fate of Instanolde in danger, but they needed more chemistry and I wasn’t looking forward to seeing them together. This was a tale of loss, duty, and sacrifice that missed the opportunity to be a great book.