I got a copy of this book as an ARC from Netgalley. As the author notes in her afterword, the worldbuilding draws on two key strands.
Firstly there are echoes of the febrile paranoia and tyranny at the court of Henry VIII as a succession of wives fall victim to their failure to produce an heir, each as much a pawn of the patriarchs within their family as of the decadent and physically decaying king they must take to bed. While the narrative avoids explicitly referencing Tudor England, Alvion is surely both an allegory and a helpful reader’s hook for the green and pleasant land of Albion aka England. I might also guess that the sometime ally/sometime foe nation of Lionesse with its devotion to hedonistic pleasures stands in for France, while Bastian (and its saturnine magician Balthasar) might evoke shades of the Holy Roman Empire.
The second strand gives us another parallel with our own world’s Renaissance, albeit a magically enhanced version. Banta’s astrologically inspired magic system poses the question, “How can it not be a version of our world when it has not just a Moon and Sun, but all the planets known to the ancients, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter & Saturn?” (It reminds me of that question from the original Planet of the Apes, Why did Charlton Heston – playing an Astronaut – have to see the Statue of Liberty to realise he was back on Earth, when the actual feckin’ Moon had been hanging in the sky the whole time!)
Banta braids these two strands of worldbuilding into an intriguing mix. The magicians are rare creatures known as the “planetborn” from the alignments of planets at their moment of birth. For astrological purposes, the Moon and the Sun are also “planets” which sort of makes sense as they too appear to move against the backdrop of zodiacal constellations spawning a variety of potential “birth charts”.
The magically endowed planetborn gain powers appropriate to their relevant planet: Mercuryborn, as befits the messengers of the gods, have magic skills in communication and the fashioning of binding oaths; Venusborn are natural lovers with power over relationships and of healing; Marsborn are warriors with skill to slice and dice people without touching them; Jupiterborn can magnify objects and multiply wealth; Saturnborn at the edge of known solar system are all about control of boundaries and portals, reaching even into the realm of the dead. I also liked the detail of hair colour and eye colour by which the planetborn can be identified at birth. (Venusborn have pink hair and eyes, Moonborn have white etc).
The planetborn are far too dangerous to be afforded complete independence, so they are apprenticed and then compelled into oathbound service for members of the aristocracy or even the king. Which gives us Roland, Venusborn magician and chancellor to the court of the fast fading King Richard of Alvion. Roland is loved and lusted after by everyone, but his position – after having ordered the execution of his predecessor – is as powerful yet as precarious as that of Thomas Cromwell, Thomas Moore, Cardinal Wolsey or any other senior minister under Henry VIII.
However, Roland – ducking and diving as he must to save his head – is not our protagonist. That distinction lies with Bianca, first person narrator of the tale and the first Moonborn mage in half a millenium. She is returning to the court of Avalon on a very personal mission, and finds the place and its people much changed in the four years of her absence.
As I hope you can see, this is an engaging and varied world in which Banta has thrown some intriguing characters together.
Curiously I found some similarities with Hannah Mathewson’s contemporary set fantasy The Age of Blood and Magic, for Banta too has a story that has a spine of Romantasy, wrapped around characters haunted by their impending mortality, and with a knotty murder mystery at its heart yearning to be resolved – so a Romurdasy if you will!
Bianca’s Moonborn unique powers – over mind and matter (I’ll say no more – spoilers) – equip her well for the business of navigating the intrigues of court and trying to uncover past secrets. The narrative moves between timelines with flashbacks and memories that explain some of Roland and Bianca’s past history. It also illustrates the love triangle that creates a further road block on their route into each other’s arms. It is perhaps not too much of a spoiler to say that they do get there in the end and it proves as satisfying as one would expect where a Venusborn is involved, though both seem to meddle with and in each other’s minds as much as bodies.
Banta’s prose flourishes in the descriptions and in the insights into Bianca’s thoughts and memories. For example when she first sees Roland again.
Time had not changed him: His cheekbones were just as sharp, his cleft chin as pronounced, his shoulders as broad. His hair and eyes both a rosy pink- Venus’s colour. A single pearl dangled from his left ear, and as he cut a wake through the courtiers, it swung back and forth. Sunlight fell on him, as if he too had been plucked from the sea, still shining with salt water. The Venus King.
Or when Bianca is quizzed by another planetborn.
“Court is a web,” Ambrose whispered softly. … “Spiders who weave and flies who are caught. Which are you?”
Or when hunkering down in a less than savory inn
Roland indicated a table in the corner, where a group of men tossed down cards and coin. They were angry and lusty and bored– a dangerous soup in men.
The assembled cast – or should I suspects – includes some strong characters with the entire Guildford clan as viperous as any of the Howard Family of Henry VIII’s time, or the Lannisters of Casterley Rock. One does feel a sympathy for the women who must navigate these dangerous times and the fate of the Seton sisters definitely evokes the unfortunate Boleyn girls. There is even a touch of academic misogyny when credit for Bianca’s research work seems set to be claimed by her mentor.
“Prospero said he may be able to include portions of it in his own book instead.”
“Under his name?”
“Yes,” I mumbled. “I assume I will be credited. And I would rather than that nothing at all.”
The plot wends as sinuously and as riven with poison as a snake, with many potential murderers for Bianca to unveil, all while trying to avoid the deadly games of a capricious king made cruel by unchallenged power. Roland is at once, foe, ally and maddening distraction and the question is always how far and how firmly should or could the planetborn stand together. As the story – and its protagonist – gallop towards the final denouement, I did find a number of satisfying twists in both the past-timeline and the present-timeline of the story. While the ending resolves nearly all – Banta has teased the readers with an opening into book two.
Banta acknowledged that her inspiration encompassed the full range of Tudor reigns and monarchs and – in Bianca – we have a compelling tribute to Elizabeth I who conquered a world of men from within the body of “a weak and feeble woman.” But as her foes find out, there is nothing weak or feeble about Bianca Mortlake.
The Court of Venus is published by Tor on 1st October 2026
Leave a Reply