Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

I wanted to love this so much more than I actually did. The themes of oppression, identity, and survival were pervasive and well developed. Even though it was a bit of a slow first half, I did like that so much time was spent on world building. The second half was fast paced and made me feel like I couldn't pause or take a break. However, the romance fell really flat to me. There were so few relationship building moments that the change from hate to love or even hate to trust felt stilted between our main characters. I think the world politics were shown very clearly, and the magic system was pretty developed but the connection to the characters could’ve been built up more fully.