Fae, elves, and humans at war at behest of the gods for eons, a unique drum magic system, hidden worlds, African and Arab mythology and influences and queer love, this book really should have been an automatic banger for me. And yet it came short on all of these fronts somehow.

I don’t know if the world wasn’t fleshed out enough, the characters weren’t likable enough or maybe it was the fact that the sisters who should be well into adulthood often acted like teenagers, but the story just wasn’t doing it for me. Whatever plot twists were written I had figured out well before they played out, and everything just felt very cookie cutter and predictable to me story wise. I wish the descriptions made up for everything, because the world created sounded very beautiful, but the scope of the world and the characters minds was somehow still so small that it just wasn’t the read for me.