TGON Reads: To Touch A Silent Fury by R.A. Sandpiper

Before we continue, this article contains affiliate links to Amazon. By purchasing through them, you are supporting The Game of Nerds.

From the indie fantasy author of A Pocket of Lies comes a new novel, To Touch A Silent Fury, the first novel in R.A. Sandpiper’s newest fantasy series, The Bride of Eavenfold.

“Years had passed, and I was just one more girl he had wronged. But I would make him remember me. Marry me. Create the very thing he’d tried so hard to Break.”

Tani is a mystery. As the only woman in the Moontouched Brotherhood, no one knows why she exists. But there is danger in mysteries, and as Tani steps forward to claim her Fate, and the power it will reward her, the eyes of kings are suddenly upon her. Her power could bring kingdoms to their knees, if she were to seize it.

When Tani is given a Marriage Fate, the answer becomes simple: she can never marry the one she is destined to. Only then will her Fate be Broken, and the girl left powerless.

But Tani will stop at nothing to claim her Fate and grasp the power that was always meant to be hers, even if that means entering the lair of the Dragon Prince himself, the very person who will stop at nothing to keep her from her Fate.

“‘The sole female Brother of Eavenfold, and a woman who could have been so much more but for ill luck… how could she of all people be given the most mundane Fate of all? Someone’s wife. And she wasn’t even allowed to have that.’”

I feel very conflicted in my review of To Touch A Silent Fury. While I went into this book thinking it was a little cliche to have the only woman in the Brotherhood be given the Marriage Fate, a Fate that is rarely ever given, Sandpiper surprised me by using the cliche to her advantage and then deviating from it when it mattered most. The story is still very much about Tani marrying the victor of the Laithcart games, but her journey to see this marriage through and seize her power happens in a way I wasn’t expecting.

The plot was interesting, and I truly found myself captivated by the desire to turn the page and read one more chapter (one more chapter, I say to myself over and over again as the hours trickle late into the night). But there was something about it that was rubbing me the wrong way, something that was pulling me out of the plot I was so eagerly reading. It took me 59% of the way through the book to realize what it was, so let’s get into it.

Langnathin, a wannabe Rhysand?

Throughout To Touch A Silent Fury, the main love interest, Langnathin, continued to remind me of Rhysand from Sarah J. Maas’s series A Court of Thorns and Roses. And while this isn’t inherently a bad thing, many authors reuse tropes that appear throughout other pieces of literature. Such is the nature of writing. The problem for me lies in the fact that although Rhysand may have been the blueprint (or some other romantasy enemies-to-lovers male lead), Lang was written in a less effective way.

Lang is the Dragon Prince of the Sightlands, the heir to a violent throne, and the son of a man who rules to be feared. By all accounts, Lang is a power hungry thief who stole the title of heir from his older brother when he stole the dragon egg that was meant to be his and bonded with the dragon inside. He is the enemy, a man who brings fire and death to all those who oppose him. This is what you would assume him to be, so it is exactly what he shows you.

He is a very Rhysand-esque character, a man born into a cruel kingdom with its violent crown upon his head. And he leans into it, letting everyone believe the assumptions they have made about the Dragon Prince, the Scourge of Courvin. But of course, this is just a mask he wears. We know this because we get chapters in his POV.

This is where I begin to lose interest in his character. Through his POV, we know that he isn’t the villain. In fact, we learn exactly who has been trying to kill Tani. Right in Part 1. Right in the beginning. We know he doesn’t think it is right for Tani to die and we know that what he does at the end of the Laithcart games is purely to protect her. We know that he does not hate her, that he isn’t trying to ruin her, and we have lost the illusion of him being the enemy too early.

Is there merit to having chapters in his POV? Yes, of course. There are so many things we see and learn that we would never get to if this book was told just through Tani’s eyes. But I do think that we lose the tension of the enemies-to-lovers slow-burn as well as the sense of danger to Tani. I am not scared for her, knowing Lang has been protecting her from his tyrannical family from the very beginning. Not to mention the undeniable attraction we know he has for her the moment he lays eyes on her.

The romance: desire at first sight

Per the goodreads description, To Touch A Silent Fury is described as a “delicious slow-burn romance.” Does it still count as a slow-burn when the characters harbor a burning desire for the other right from the moment they meet?

“I knew nothing beyond the scientific about the touches a man could bestow on a woman, but there was something in his nature, something in the heat in his gaze, that rooted me where I stood.”

Personally, I don’t think so. But beyond the matter of how the book is marketed, the question I really want to ask is this: does the tension still feel real to you when the attraction is immediate? What Lang and Tani have isn’t quite insta-love. They certainly don’t love each other, they don’t even know each other enough to like each other. But this is assuredly a case of insta-desire and it doesn’t feel believable to me.

I was happy to see their relationship develop into something more as we continued into Parts 3 and 4, but the tension was underwhelming when it’s all we’ve known between the two of them since the very beginning.

It didn’t help that all Lang seemed to be able to think or talk about was how beautiful she is.

“‘How could I forget a face like yours?’ he asked. ‘Your beauty has haunted me for years. Did you think I would not know you in a breath, in a moment, at a glance?’”

That line would be so much more effective if his every other thought wasn’t about how pretty she is and how he can’t get her out of his head. What frustrates me is that we know he values her in other ways. He quite literally describes her as he lists off the qualities he would like to see in his wife. It is obvious to both the reader and Tani that he is intentionally describing her. But this is one of the few times we see Lang acknowledge that Tani is more than her beauty.

The superficial nature of their relationship takes away from its authenticity. Do I believe Lang loves her by the end? Sure, I can believe he’s lovestruck. But truly in love? I don’t know.

Too much plot, so little book

To Touch A Silent Fury was split into four parts. In Part 1, we see Tani get her Fate and attend the Laithcart games, Part 2 is her time in the Gossamir forest searching for the dragon egg, and Parts 3 and 4 follow her to the castle of the Dragon Prince to finally fulfill the terms of her Fate and gain her powers. While the plot is one of the biggest wins for me in this book, I do think that Sandpiper was a bit over-ambitious with how much she included in her first book.

The fact that I think the book would be more interesting if it had ended among the carnage of the Laithcart games, making us realize that this is only the beginning, that the real story starts here, with Tani alone, with nothing but a score to settle and a plan to take back what was rightfully hers, is purely my own opinion. But I do believe that the book would have benefited from some extra space to breathe.

The plot feels too fast in some places, resulting in lore dumps to feel random and disingenuous, a simple device to throw info in that will be relevant later before moving on to something else entirely. 

For example, the big reveal at the end makes sense in the way Sandpiper has explained it, but we spent so little time focusing on the relevancy of being a Twinblood or the power that twins hold in the Touchlands, Tani’s home region, that it feels out of place. The unveiling of the secret behind her existence as the only woman in the Moontouched Brotherhood is underwhelming. I don’t know enough to truly understand why it matters. Perhaps it will be explained in the rest of the series, but for now, it simply does not feel as important as the main plotline of Tani marrying to claim her Fate.

I believe that this issue could have been resolved by ending the book at an earlier point and extending its parts. Let us live in Gossamir with Tani. Let us learn to love the forest with her, so when she learns of the Sightland’s plans to invade it, we actually care. Let us live through the Laithcart games, courting the lords and knights of the tourney, so when it all comes crashing down we are afraid. We care. The feelings To Touch A Silent Fury evokes would be more genuine and I would be much more interested in figuring out its secrets.

My final thoughts

I would recommend To Touch A Silent Fury to fans of A Court of Thorns and Roses and Fourth Wing. It hits all of the romantasy notes, has a relatively simple fantasy world that is interesting and easy to understand, and a plot that moves quickly. I did not personally love the romance, though I was enjoying it more in Parts 3 and 4, but there is a good balance of romance and plot for those who like both in their fantasy books.

I gave this a rating of 3/5 stars.

Thank you to R.A. Sandpiper and Sandpiper Publishing for sending me an eARC in exchange for an honest review. To Touch A Silent Fury comes out on September 5th, 2025. It will also be available on Kindle Unlimited.