This was so much fun!! I can't remember the last time I outright cackled at a book, and the ending had me smiling so wide (and shocked, to be fair).

Admittedly I almost rated this book 4 stars because while it was super fun, there's lots of little world/plot holes, things are sometimes resolved fairly easily, and it was fairly predictable. But then the final reveal caught me completely off guard and it was fantastic. And honestly, the book was just way too enjoyable to rate it any lower. The only time the above issues actually bugged me was when I was discussing them at length in book club, and even then they didn't impact my actual reading experience when I continued reading.

I just really loved Alessandra and Kallias and they're relationship so much. I mean, they sucked as people but in this book almost everyone did, so by comparison they were easy to like (for me at least). Like these are definitely the evil king and queen that some other books would work to overthrow but I loved that this book just didn't care about that aspect. It went hard, Alessandra was a manipulative, cruel, calculating woman, and Kallias's dreams were to literally conquer the entire world, but I didn't care? They were just so great together and that's all I ended up caring about.

I haven't read any of the other books by this author yet, but now I'm seriously excited to. If they're as fun as this one was, I'm excited!