Verdict: An accomplished sapphic epic fantasy with a bodyguard romance that earns its slow burn, undercut by a book-one ending that separates the leads and resolves nothing.
Best for: Readers who want Game of Thrones-scale court politics with two women at the centre, and who will commit to three books before anyone gets a happy ending.
Heat level: ★★★★☆ (4/5 — explicit open door)
Rating: ★★★★☆ (4/5 — a 4.25 Goodreads average across 2,907 ratings, marked down for an ending that gives the romance nothing)
Tropes: Bodyguard romance, princess and her protector, slow burn, forbidden love, forced proximity, political intrigue, reluctant heir, class and culture divide, tortured heroine, found family.
Princess of Dorsa by Eliza Andrews opens The Chronicles of Dorsa, a self-published epic sapphic fantasy trilogy set in an empire of Four Realms where Princess Natasia — Tasia — survives an assassination attempt, becomes an unprecedented female heir, and is assigned a bodyguard from the eastern desert named Joslyn, whose loyalty starts as a job and does not stay one.
It carries a 4.25 average across 2,907 Goodreads ratings, 4.06 across 660 StoryGraph reviews and 4.7 across 1,692 Amazon ratings — eight years after a self-published release with no trade coverage and no viral moment. The split is not about quality. It is about what people thought they were buying, and how they feel about waiting two more books for the romance to pay out.
What Is Princess of Dorsa About?
This is epic fantasy first and a romance second, and the proportions matter more here than in almost any book I have reviewed. Amazon files it under Metaphysical Fantasy and Historical Fantasy ahead of Lesbian Romance, and that ordering is honest. StoryGraph readers tag it 94% adventurous. The romance is central to the emotional architecture and occupies a minority of the page count. Expect a romance with a fantasy backdrop and the first 200 pages will feel like a bait and switch.
The frame is deliberate. Andrews built an empire with a conquest history, an order of scholar-advisors, a twelve-year war grinding on in the East, a suppressed cult, and a supernatural threat that stays at the edge of the frame until it does not. Readers reach for the same comparison constantly — nine of the thirty most-read Goodreads reviews invoke Game of Thrones or George R. R. Martin by name. That comparison earns its keep as a description of scale. It also sets some readers up for disappointment, because this book is far more interested in its two women than Martin has ever been in anyone.
What Makes This Sapphic Epic Fantasy Work
- The character work: 86% of StoryGraph readers marked strong character development as yes against 4% who said no — lopsided for a 591-page first-in-series.
- The slow burn: Tasia and Joslyn move from resentment to trust to something else across the whole book, and reviewers naming a favourite element name this one.
- Completion rate: StoryGraph logs a 4% did-not-finish rate, less than half what I have seen on shorter, easier books this year.
- The world: Amazon’s review summary credits the “well-developed world-building”, and readers call the Four Realms coherent rather than decorative.
- The narration: Elizabeth Saydah reads all three books plus the prequel, and listeners single out her accent work for the eastern characters.
Book Synopsis
Natasia of House Dorsa is the eldest child of Emperor Andreth, ruler of the Four Realms, and by every custom she knows that makes her a bargaining chip rather than an heir. Her job is to marry a man her father can shape into a successor. She spends her energy on the only rebellion available — slipping the palace at night, taking women to bed and men in public so the story holds. Then someone tries to kill her.
The Emperor cannot identify his enemy. The western lords have rebelled before and will again. The eastern territories have fought subjugation for twelve years. The banned Cult of Culo is spoken of with more fear than a defunct religion should command. With his daughter’s life proven fragile, Andreth considers something the Empire has not seen in living memory: putting a woman on the throne.
He assigns her a bodyguard. Joslyn of Terinto is the best blade in the Imperial Army, born in the eastern desert the West calls barbarian country, and ordered to keep Tasia alive and teach her to fight. Tasia sees a jailer. Joslyn sees a job. Neither is prepared for how fast it becomes something they both depend on — which is when the palace stops being safe.
My Review
Andrews set out to write a real epic fantasy that happened to have queer leads rather than a romance wearing a crown, and she did it. That explains almost everything about how the book is received. The political machinery works. The succession problem has no clean answer. The war in the East is a budget line and a body count rather than a backdrop. The supernatural element surfaces late and hits harder for it.
The relationship is the best thing in it. Tasia starts as a spoiled, reckless girl with more nerve than judgement, and the version of her at the end is the same person with the recklessness converted into something usable. Joslyn is the harder trick — quiet, closed, revealed in fragments, and still the character readers come out talking about. The dynamic carries a power imbalance the book never pretends away: Tasia can order Joslyn to do things, and both know it. Andrews takes the whole book to move them, and the patience pays.
The craft is uneven, and honest reviews say so. Seven of the thirty most-read Goodreads reviews comment on prose or editing, and the split is instructive — some call it extremely well written, others find the sentences a chore early on. One describes the run up to the 65% mark as a slog before conceding the prose improved. Five of thirty flag a slow start. The book takes a long time to leave the palace, and if you need momentum early you will not get it.
The other recurring objection is more serious and rarely raised in the glowing reviews. Six of thirty touch on how the East is written — the exotic framing, the barbarian stereotype the West holds and the narrative sets out to dismantle. Readers split on whether the dismantling works. The most detailed critical review credits Andrews with more awareness than Martin while arguing Joslyn’s backstory leans on tropes that come standard-issue for the sole major character of colour.
Then there is the ending, which is why this review does not score higher. Book one separates Tasia and Joslyn, and the epilogue makes it worse. There is no happy ending, no happy-for-now, nothing resembling romantic resolution — the trilogy takes roughly 2,066 pages to get there. romance.io files this as standalone-first, and that label does not survive the last chapter. Five of the top thirty raise the cliffhanger unprompted, and the ones who liked it were already committed to the series.
My honest note: This is one of the best-built sapphic epic fantasies I have read from a self-published author, and the romance is worth the wait if you are prepared to do the waiting. Start it as a trilogy or do not start it at all.
| Element | In Princess of Dorsa |
|---|---|
| Central relationship | Princess Natasia “Tasia” & Joslyn of Terinto — heir and assigned bodyguard, slow-burn forbidden romance |
| Core tropes | Bodyguard romance, forbidden love, forced proximity, slow burn, court intrigue, class and culture divide |
| Setting | The Empire of the Four Realms — secondary-world epic fantasy, imperial court and eastern desert |
| Heat level | 4/5 — romance.io rates it “Explicit open door”; explicit scenes arrive early |
| Series | The Chronicles of Dorsa #1 of 3 — trilogy complete (2018, 2020, 2022); prequel series began 2023 |
| Content notes | StoryGraph readers flag misogyny, violence and death as graphic; racism, slavery and death of a parent as moderate; war and sexual violence as minor |
How Spicy Is Princess of Dorsa?
romance.io rates it 4 out of 5 for steam and labels it “Explicit open door”, which matches what readers report. The sex is on the page, described rather than implied, and it starts earlier than the slow-burn framing suggests — one reviewer flags an explicit scene inside the first hundred pages, well before Tasia and Joslyn are anywhere near each other. Tasia has a sex life before the romance begins, and the book treats it matter-of-factly.
Frequency is where the epic fantasy structure asserts itself. Across 591 pages the scenes are few and widely spaced. Three of the thirty most-read Goodreads reviews mention the heat at all — on a book where spice is the draw that number runs far higher. If explicit content is your reason for picking up a sapphic fantasy, this is not the efficient way to get it. If you want heat that reads as a consequence of six hundred pages of restraint, it lands. For comparison, our review of She Came for Blood covers a book at the band above.
Who Should Read This Book?
You’ll likely love it if: you want epic fantasy with real political weight and sapphic leads at the centre rather than the margins, you have been looking for a queer answer to Game of Thrones and are fine with the comparison meaning scale rather than nihilism, you read slow burn for the burn rather than the resolution, and you will commit to a full trilogy up front.
You may want to skip it if: you need a happy ending in the book you are currently reading, you want a romance where the couple share most of the page count, you bounce off long politics-heavy openings, or you are sensitive to slavery, sexual violence and racial stereotyping as sustained setting elements rather than isolated incidents.
In short: the best sapphic epic fantasy on Kindle Unlimited, and not one to start unless you intend to finish the trilogy.
What Readers Are Actually Saying (August 2026)
The discourse here is quiet in a revealing way. There is no viral moment, and TikTok surfaces only auto-generated topic pages with no organic traction I could find. I found no review at The Lesbrary, I Heart SapphFic, LezReviewBooks or Bookish Sapphic, and no trade coverage from Publishers Weekly, Kirkus, Library Journal or Booklist. What exists is thin and old: a five-star audiobook review at Jude in the Stars from April 2019, one at The Lesbian Review, and a personal blog write-up from February 2019. The author’s own website now redirects to an unrelated domain. Across six Goodreads sapphic-fantasy recommendation threads I read, Princess of Dorsa appears in two, and is absent from the threads asking for high fantasy sapphic reads and for Priory of the Orange Tree read-alikes. What sustains 2,907 ratings, then, is Kindle Unlimited and the audiobook. Five of the thirty most-read reviews mention finding it through KU, seven mention the narration, and it still sits at #1,113 in Metaphysical Fantasy on Amazon eight years on. Category placement and subscription browsing are doing the work word of mouth is not.
Why readers love it (according to the discourse): The character arcs, first and loudest — 86% of StoryGraph readers say the development is strong and 80% call the characters loveable. World-building comes second, described as coherent rather than ornamental. The Tasia and Joslyn dynamic comes third, praised for the time Andrews spends before anything romantic happens. Amazon’s summary credits a complex plot with a hopeful surprise ending, and the 4% did-not-finish rate says most people who start a 591-page indie epic finish it.
What readers argue about and complain about: The slow opening, raised by five of thirty, and the mechanism is structural — the book stays inside the palace running court politics before anything moves. Prose and editing, raised by seven of thirty, split between readers who call it excellent and readers who found the early chapters heavy going. The treatment of the East, raised by six of thirty, where Joslyn carries the entire burden of representing a culture the narrative has framed as exotic. And the cliffhanger, raised by five of thirty: the leads are separated in the final act and the epilogue widens the gap.
The series question everyone should ask first: Book one does not resolve, does not deliver an HEA, and ends with the couple apart. The trilogy is complete — Soldier of Dorsa (2020, 4.25 across 1,490 ratings) and Empress of Dorsa (2022, 4.39 across 683 ratings) — and the ratings hold or improve, which is rare. Book two reunites them and sets up the finale without a hard cliffhanger. Book three resolves the plot and gives the couple an ending, though readers argue about the cost Tasia pays. Attrition is steep: book two has 51% of book one’s ratings, book three 23%. If cliffhangers ruin books for you, buy all three now, or skip the series entirely.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does Princess of Dorsa end on a cliffhanger?
Yes, and a significant one. The leads are separated in the final act, the epilogue compounds it, and there is no happy ending or happy-for-now in book one. Five of the thirty most-read Goodreads reviews raise it unprompted, so treat any standalone-first label with suspicion.
Is Princess of Dorsa a romance or a fantasy novel?
It is epic fantasy with a central sapphic romance, not a fantasy romance. Amazon files it under Metaphysical Fantasy and Historical Fantasy ahead of Lesbian Romance. The romance matters enormously to the emotional arc and occupies a minority of the page count.
Is Princess of Dorsa on Kindle Unlimited?
Yes. The Goodreads buy box shows a Kindle Unlimited price of zero, and there is no Kobo, Nook or Apple Books ebook edition, which is what KDP Select exclusivity looks like from outside. Several reviewers say they found it browsing KU.
Is there an audiobook, and who narrates it?
Elizabeth Saydah narrates, and the edition runs 15 hours 35 minutes, released 14 December 2018 and self-published. Saydah reads all three Dorsa books plus the prequel, and listeners consistently praise her accent work. It is not stocked on Libro.fm.
Do I need to read the whole trilogy?
Effectively, yes. The romance does not resolve until Empress of Dorsa, and the three books run roughly 2,066 pages combined. The trilogy is finished, so nobody is waiting on a release date.
If You Loved Princess of Dorsa, Read These Next
Readers who like this book reach for three titles most often, and each trades something away. The Priory of the Orange Tree gives you the same imperial scale and a queer slow burn in one self-contained volume — resolution solved, heat dialled down to almost nothing. The Jasmine Throne matches the court intrigue and handles colonial politics with more precision, at the cost of being darker and also ending on a cliffhanger. And if the protector-and-charge dynamic is the draw, our spicy sapphic romantasy guide ranks twenty-five books with romance centrality assessed separately from heat. More in paranormal and fantasy lesbian romance and the full book reviews category.
The Bottom Line
Princess of Dorsa is the rare self-published epic fantasy that deserves the comparison it keeps getting, sustained eight years on by Kindle Unlimited browsing and a strong audiobook rather than by any community championing it. The romance is patient, the politics have teeth, and the flaws are real: a slow first third, prose that divides readers, an eastern culture carrying more weight than it can bear, and an ending that gives the couple nothing. Go in knowing it is book one of three and the payoff is 2,000 pages away, and it is one of the strongest things in the subgenre. Check Princess of Dorsa on Amazon →
The Eikna Overall Ranking
On the Eikna scale, Princess of Dorsa ranks as a genuine indie sapphic epic fantasy — formidable world-building and patient character work, constrained by a slow opening third and a book-one ending that withholds every romantic payoff, and best approached for the trilogy-length political saga rather than for a romance you can finish this week.
The Evidence Scorecard
Overall ★★★★☆ 4/5
- ✓ 4.25 average across 2,907 Goodreads ratings
- ✓ 4.06 on StoryGraph from 660 reviews
- ✓ 4.7 on Amazon across 1,692 ratings
- ✓ Marked down for an unresolved book-one ending
Romance ★★★★☆ 4/5
- ✓ Slow burn built across the full 591 pages
- ✓ Power imbalance acknowledged rather than ignored
- ✓ Both leads get interiority, not just the princess
- ✓ Minority of page count and no resolution here
Characters ★★★★☆ 4.4/5
- ✓ 86% of StoryGraph readers confirm strong development
- ✓ 80% of the same readers call them loveable
- ✓ Joslyn is the standout in most reviews
- ✓ Six of thirty question her cultural coding
Writing ★★★★☆ 3.8/5
- ✓ World-building praised as coherent and lived-in
- ✓ Supernatural threat withheld with real discipline
- ✓ Seven of thirty comment on prose quality
- ✓ Reviewers genuinely split on the sentences
Emotional Impact ★★★★☆ 4.3/5
- ✓ 52% of StoryGraph readers tag it emotional
- ✓ Final-act separation lands with real force
- ✓ Misogyny and slavery given weight, not decoration
- ✓ Only 18% found it sad overall
Heat Level ★★★★☆ 4/5
- ✓ romance.io band four, explicit open door
- ✓ On-page scenes, described not implied
- ✓ First explicit scene inside a hundred pages
- ✓ Few scenes, widely spaced across 591 pages
Ending ★★★☆☆ 3.2/5
- ✓ Political plot reaches a real turning point
- ✓ Epilogue is a deliberate, effective gut-punch
- ✓ Five of thirty reviews flag the cliffhanger
- ✓ No HEA, no HFN, leads separated
Re-read Value ★★★★☆ 3.9/5
- ✓ Only a 4% did-not-finish rate on StoryGraph
- ✓ Trilogy complete, so rereads have a destination
- ✓ 15-hour Saydah audiobook makes a strong second pass
- ✓ 2,066 trilogy pages discourage casual revisiting
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