Leanna Mackellin's Reviews > The Longest Autumn

The Longest Autumn is a book where a magical artifact breaks and causes terrible consequences for literally everybody, and the main character is the prime suspect. Tirne swears she’ll do anything necessary to restore it, a vow that gets her in trouble. The sheer amount of trouble she gets into is really bold too, there’s no shortage of tension here.

There are a lot of things I really liked about this novel. The worldbuilding was fantastically creative! A pantheon of seasonal gods and myths to support how it formed that seems to have taken inspiration from Greek/Roman mythology, but isn’t a one for one imitation. There are holidays too that aren’t just reskinned fantasy Christmas and New years. Autumn himself is very fleshed out, as most of the characters are. The temple is a living place, with people bustling about. Additionally, there’s a lot of LGBT reps here. A character going by they/them, multiple same sex pairings, and an aromantic character (seriously, props for the aromantic one, I’ve never seen it in fiction before and the A needs some more reps!) These are all treated as normal too. I also really liked how chronic illness was handed. It was respectful, done well, and affected the plot.

My main gripe with the novel is WHY IS IT SO SEXUAL ALL THE TIME?!?!

If I weren’t reading an ARC (Thanks NetGalley!), I’d have stopped at the second chapter. Fire and Shadow, it starts in the second chapter! AND IT NEVER STOPS. Remember the fun worldbuilding I said something about? The holiday in question is one where they basically celebrate sex, all get drunk at a dance and then go have sex with each other after. Remember how I mentioned the temple? Yeah, there are no doors so Tirne tells the reader she can hear everyone having sex as she goes down the halls. Everyone seems to be in an open relationship too, I swear, no one knows the meaning of monogamy. Tirne has sex with three other characters and turns down a fourth, one of which she hates at times but keeps going back to because spice I think??? That one actually goes somewhere plot wise though, not like the first sexual encounter that’s pretty much irrelevant.

None of those things are bad per se, but they make the book very different from what it’s marketed as. The way probably more than half the chapters had some reference to sex WILL turn readers away because it’s not advertised at all in the cover or blurb. It’s a shame, because I really was invested in the mystery, but the resolution was more about the sex which made me a little disappointed. It really fizzled out for me at the end, all this great mystery and character development dumped so Tirne can go have sex one more time. But it was with a different character that time so I think the novel wanted me to want that? Yeah, the way the mystery ended was super disappointing.

Also, the prose isn’t quite doing it for me. It’s like one out of every five words could be cut with nothing of importance lost. To many ly words, I think.

If I knew ahead of time more content warnings, I wouldn’t have bothered.

The Longest Review for The Longest Autumn :)