3.5 stars.

Y’all I’m very torn between 3 and 4 stars on this one, because I was deathly bored for about the first 70% of this book. It was kind of just another attempt at high fantasy that didn’t strike me as very different or especially good. The romances both felt insta-lovey and I wasn’t very invested at all. Iman’s constant flip flopping irritated me to no end. I never felt particularly attached to any of the main characters.

However.

The end of this book gave me chills, which I did not expect given how ambivalent I had been for most of the story. I liked the allegory of the story and how Adeyemi talks about the struggles of Black Americans in the authors note and how it connects to the story.

So...I probably will give the sequel a go but I’m not sure I would recommend this book to people given how much boredom I had to slog through.