Inked in Ashes

I’ll admit, I rolled my eyes at *another* Cinderella retelling—until the first chapter, when Mayer’s heroine carves a man’s eye out with a dinner fork. That’s the tone: elegant brutality. The romance with the king’s brother, Lir, is less about swooning and more about two broken people using each other as shields in a court where trust is a death sentence. Hugh’s narration sells this perfectly; her Lir is all smoldering gravel, but it’s her delivery of the heroine’s dry, exhausted humor that really lands. When she mutters, *“Of course the prince wants the cursed girl. Original,”* you’ll laugh—and then wince when the next scene proves her right. The pacing is where things get tricky. The middle sags under the weight of revolution plotting, and a few side characters (looking at you, rebellious blacksmith) feel like missed opportunities for deeper stakes. But the final act? Relentless. Mayer doesn’t flinch from the cost of magic or love, and the audiobook’s sound design—subtle, but there—heightens the tension: the *scratch* of a quill signing death warrants, the *hiss* of ink burning into skin. My one real gripe? The villain’s motive is undercooked. We’re told he’s monstrous, but his cruelty lacks the layered menace of, say, *The Cruel Prince*’s Madoc. Still, by the end, you’ll be hard-pressed to find another audiobook that balances fairy-tale whimsy and revolutionary gore this deftly. Just maybe don’t listen while eating.