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This was very charming!
Royal Rescue is the lovely story of a bunch of teens and a dragon overthrowing a nonsensical tradition of royal rescuers and rescuees. It’s also the story of an aromantic and asexual teen struggling with both the external prejudice he faces because of his identity as well as the internal consequences.

At age eighteen, when they become marriageable, all royal children in the Thousand Kingdoms must either go questing to rescue another royal or be hidden away to await rescue themselves. Some go the traditional route of princes rescuing princesses, but not all princes want to be rescuers…and some would rather rescue other princes.
Then there’s Prince Gerald, who has no interest in getting married at all. When he refuses to choose a role as either rescuer or rescuee, his royal parents choose for him and have him magicked away to a distant tower to await a spouse.
Gerald, however, is having none of it. He recruits his guardian dragon and a would-be rescuer and soon the trio is dashing to all corners of the united kingdoms on a quest to overturn the entire system.

I received an ARC and reviewed honestly and voluntarily.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

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Content warnings include: aphobia (both internalized and from outside), suicidal ideation, (magical) animal abuse, character gets drugged and enchanted against their will, character becomes physically disabled after suffering a serious injury.

“I don’t want to be married!” he shouted at the wall. “I don’t want to fall in love! I don’t want to sleep with anyone! Why is that such a problem for everyone?!”

I absolutely adored finally getting my hands on a YA fantasy book with an aro ace protagonist at the center! It definitely would have helped me as a teen.
The protagonist Gerald’s asexuality is definitely one of if not the main focus of the book. It’s not a story about discovering your own identity – Gerald is very sure of that – but rather of dealing with other peoples’ reaction to it and finding (self-) acceptance. As such, there are so many important conversations about asexuality and being aromantic, both really basic ones and more individual ones. Gerald is also sex-repulsed (and probably touch-averse to a certain degree) and does not want a romantic relationship. Being aro ace myself I was able to relate to him a lot, down to him not always being able to put his feelings into words.

As part of these conversations there is also a lot of aphobia. Most other people in the book (and honestly, real life) can’t wrap their head around not feeling attraction, and they don’t listen to or don’t believe Gerald when he talks about his experiences – aro and/or ace readers should be aware that this book contains basically every possible (negative/ignorant) reaction to coming out as ace/aro.

Gerald also deals with a lot of internalized aphobia, both in combination from what he is told by other people and from his other struggles with not feeling like he’s fitting in and being uncomfortable in crowds. This is intensified by other events happening in the middle of the book that made these feelings even worse.

I also really liked that Gerald was frequently worried and anxious. He is not a brave and daring hero but often unsure and doesn’t know how to proceeded or if his actions are right. Combined with his struggles about his identity and self acceptance that made for a rather bleak reading experience at times, and it dragged a little in between, but I didn’t mind too much. Overall it’s definitely not an unhappy book – there is a quite present humor and a few running jokes.

I shortly want to address the book’s blurb: I found it to be a bit misleading. I didn’t immediately realize it would have not just an aro ace protagonist and feature his identity as such a core part of the plot, but I also expected the book to be rather homophobic/queerphobic. It isn’t, and that’s very obvious from the start – Gerald has two mothers, and non-binary peoples’ existence is acknowledged very early too (though there was one or two instances of very cis-normative language.)
On both counts this ended up being a very positive surprise for me.

Another thing I liked was the use of magic. The two-way “chatroom” scroll and the interactive maps were super cool and very innovative!

I also liked the big cast of side characters – I wish they had played bigger roles and appeared more often, especially non-antagonistic female characters. There were also several non-binary characters and a variety of POC characters.
Also, dragons!!!!

Overall I enjoyed Royal Rescue a lot. It’s not perfect, but a wonderfully charming debut with a combination of genre tropes, plot and characters that I adored!

Check the book out on Goodreads and buy it here.

~iam