I’m a bit disappointed. But let me get to that…

I read somewhere that this was ‘fan fiction’, and while there were faint similarities to another series based on thingies in the sky and certain characters from that story, this was different enough to be unique.

Guanzon’s writing style is addictive, her phrasing often delicious, with lots of food bits entwined—and even though she loses herself too often in over-telling about clothing and body details (some people love this), she balances it with the imagery of gorgeous landscapes and sunsets and starry nights over glistening seas (and I love that).

So. I started out loving this. It began well. Adventurous and intriguing, good world-build and feisty characters, but by halfway through it took a disappointing turn towards the all-too prevalent trope of enemies-to-lovers (a not-so-reluctant juvenile romance rife with sexual tension), and I don’t think that’s any kind of spoiler. Despite this distraction overtaking the plot (quite to the core), the rest of the story raced with politics and was jammed full of jungle-challenges and trimmed with the mention of dragons (a brief cameo) and you’d think these things would be redemptive to a spiralling one-thought plot. But the rest of the interesting action wasn’t near enough to counterbalance the overshadowing, all-consuming, tunnel-vision trajectory of getting these two between the sheets.

I didn’t <i>love</i> it.  It too rapidly became too much of a too-many-details romance. Sure, the riveting periphery was enough to keep it out of a shallow two-star pit, the fantastical world-build placed it on a good 3-star plateau, and the writing style (and brief bits of angry humour) added some shine.But I didn’t love it. 

The anatomical language this ‘new adult’ category is fraught with these days soon emerged: by Haley’s, we were deep in a cheap obvious lead-up to a cheap, somehow ‘morally acceptable’ sex scene, and this obsessive plot-direction really stole the potential beauty from an otherwise intriguing story.

This is a ‘new adult’ all-focus ‘romance’ with a fantasy setting as the functional-disposable backdrop, rather than great fantasy with an embedded romance. Maybe this su gente is just not for me (it’s not)…that said, I didn’t <i>hate</i> the bulk of it either. I just—based on my expectations developed by its riveting start—hoped it would be a lot more likeable by the end. But by the end, I was so disappointed by the ballooned juvenile sex-craze, even the lingering whiff of a limping plot couldn’t tempt me to carry on with a series, as that’s obviously where this is headed…