A Dance of Lies and Lust by Tea Spangsberg, the first book in the A World of Houses trilogy, is a dark and spicy MMF polyamorous romantasy. It’s an intense enemies-to-lovers story with villainous characters who are hellbent on revenge.
Sofie trained for ten years to travel to Midnight City and seek revenge for the wrongs done to her and her mother when she was a child. She has a list of eleven names, and she plans to kill each and every man on that list.
When she arrives in Midnight City, she meets a broken man named Killian Jones and adapts her plans to save his life. There is so much pain and brutality in this city, and much to her surprise, there are good people who want to help her and Killian get justice for all of the cruelty they’ve endured.
There’s also Wrath, whose journey for power and revenge of his own brings him across Sofie’s path. He has a history with Kill, and the pull between the three of them is undeniable, even with the complicated politics at play.
What starts out as a revenge mission quickly turns into so much more. This found family might have a chance at building something new for Midnight City, if lies and betrayals don’t tear them apart first.
These characters were not particularly dimensional. All of them are defined by their pain and the traumas they have suffered. Sofie and Wrath are unquestionably villains. Both have no qualms about killing innocents. Neither of them are morally good people. They both have their reasons, though, and their darkness makes them fascinating to read. Killian, on the other hand, is the balance. He’s the sweet to their stabby, and he adds a much-needed softness to this chaotic dynamic.
A Dance of Lies and Lust is engaging and easy to fall into, but there are glaring issues with the writing that are extremely hard to ignore. The grammatical errors start in the prologue and continue throughout the book. They are abundant, and at times, I would have to read a sentence several times to figure out what the author was trying to say.
It’s not just a proofreading issue. For characters who are supposedly all kinds of dangerous and traumatized, they become very vulnerable with each other very quickly. There is a certain suspension of disbelief required here, and parts of the story feel incredibly rushed. This is a book that is all about the vibes, and not thinking too hard (or at all) about the details.
Those vibes are dark. It’s all about sex and vengeance for these characters, and things get incredibly gory and gruesome in several places. This is not a book where content warnings should be skipped. While many of them are fun and kinky, many of them are quite dark and deal with heavy trauma.
The romance in A Dance of Lies and Lust is not a slow burn. There is instant attraction between all of them, even in objectively dangerous situations. Bisexuality abounds, and one of my favorite things about this world is that there is very little straightness to be found here, and it’s completely normalized.
While there were obvious problems with the writing, I found myself invested in A Dance of Lies and Lust nonetheless, although I desperately wish this book had gotten another few rounds of edits. It’s a creative and exciting story, and if you don’t think about it too hard, it’s a fun ride.
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