A huge thank you to the author, NetGalley, and Flatiron Books for providing this e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.

A fantasy novel where the four seasons are actually gods who enter our world for only 3 months out of the year, and whose presence facilitates is the cause of the changing of the seasons. This novel greatly resembles how the Greeks saw the change of the seasons, with the presence or absence of Persephone in the Underworld, but takes it further to include all four changes - Summer, Winter, Spring, and Autumn.

Our main character, Tirne, is the Herald of Autumn - in charge of bringing the spirits of the dead to rest, and in bringing her god of Autumn into the world when it’s time to change the season from Summer. However, in her sixth year of doing this - when exiting the Mirror to bring the gods into the mortal realm - it breaks, shattering the connection and trapping the world in an endless autumn. Nothing can grow as everything slowly dies, and eventually famine hits the world and the spirits of the dead pile up, with nowhere to go.

Tirne is the main suspect for the breaking of this Mirror, and she must investigate on her own to try to uncover the real culprit before time runs out on the living. With her connection to Autumn, she has a bit of his magic, and the ability to feel his emotions - as the longer he remains in the world of the mortals, the more mortal he becomes.This is dangerous, as if he spends too long in the mortal realm he may no longer be an immortal god, and instead simply a man.

I wanted to like this novel more than I did. Even with its very Greek retelling feel, this novel never fully did it for me. I’ll explain further in detail with more specific spoilers, but as I believe this novel to be a standalone I felt much of the worldbuilding and character relationships left much to be desired. (If there is a sequel, then I will revise my statement.) I think if this book had a sequel, it could account for much of the issues I had with this novel, as much of my issues are things feeling unfinished with questions left unanswered.

There are issues with the religion in this novel - much of which are things assumed to be factual, that Tirne discovers to be untrue - that is simply brushed over at the end of this book as things go back to Square One. In the same way, she has 3 relationships throughout this novel, all of which do not really go anywhere and end with none of them together - which makes the reader feel a bit empty when the book ends. There were also parts of this book near the end that felt rushed, and as I was reading it (and especially after the ending) it felt like a good 100-200 pages of plot was removed and only the main events were kept. However, near the middle there is a bit of a stagnation where nothing really happens, which I think should have been the parts that were edited for brevity instead.

However, overall I did enjoy this novel and would recommend it for a reader who enjoys novels that feel like Greek myth retellings. As I was reading it, I was never bored and I cared about the characters and what happened to them. I enjoyed some of the romances in this novel, and thought the character relationships to be interesting and diverse. I also enjoyed the disability representation with the main character and her chronic headaches.

SPOILERS AHEAD: I kept these at the very end, so you could read my full review without reading any spoilers. These are more specifics with the issues I had with this book, but in describing them I’d be spoiling those events. Also, I may or may not get mean so don’t shoot the messenger, I warned you.


RELATIONSHIPS:

I thought the development and inclusion of some of the relationships in this novel to be unnecessary, and a few times it felt like they were included only to keep this novel from being classified as YA.

Our first look at this is when Tirne returns from the ceremony with the broken mirror, and meets up with her childhood friend. Instead of communicating, they immediately have sex to distract herself from her issues - and apparently, them hooking up when she’s back in the mortal realm is a regular occurrence, despite him having another relationship. I’m not a prude or saying friends with benefits can’t exist, but this felt like an abrupt change of pace when it happened and I was more surprised than anything. Reading this didn’t do anything for me, and I kind of just read it waiting for it to finish so we could continue the novel. (Also, I clearly missed something when he was introduced because I legitimately thought he was her brother before this point, but clearly I was wrong, lol. That’s how out of left field this development was.)

The other relationship that I kind of thought was unnecessary was her attraction to her god Autumn. I have to admit, while this concept drew me in (the relationship between the two developed kind of like in Gods of Jade and Shadow), with Tirne’s other more prominent relationship this never impressed me. The description says this is a forbidden romance between the two, but it’s more of a blink and you’ll miss it - and then, he’s back in the realm of gods and no longer has human emotions so it’s done. We suddenly go from her being his Herald, to her noticing how “attractive” he is, and then as Autumn becomes more human with more and more emotions - he starts breaking the rules to be with her. (Also, this is a personal gripe, but they hook up after she’s had months of starvation to the point she can’t eat without severely watering it down for her stomach - the entire time they had sex I was like “hello???? HELLO???? Miss ma’am, how do you have the energy for this?” It’s just hard to get into the idea of them having sexytimes when she’s described as being sunken and skeletal, okay.)

Her final relationship, and the only one that actually fits in this novel, in my opinion, is with a sorcerer named Sidriel. I was kind of surprised this turned into an actual relationship, because he’s such a morally ambiguous man who at times is a significant antagonist. However, their chemistry develops fairly well from hate sex to something more, and I wish the novel focused more on this than her other romantic entanglements. There’s supposed to be some drama between her being attracted to the other two as opposed to him, but honestly I feel like the drama could have been even if she wasn’t attracted to Autumn, and just him to her. Also, there’s literally no development to this relationship, as after the events of the novel he breaks it off with her and she mopes on her own. And then, she decides she NEEDS closure and goes to see him again - and once again, he just says no and then she accepts it?

Tirne had an entire dynamic where she had to break up with a significant other because she only spends 3 months out of the year in the mortal realm. However, after the events of the novel she has to remove Autumn’s magic and live there full-time. I thought for SURE that would be the catalyst for her and Sidriel to be together, as he had lost one love to the gods, but gained another - and she learned to prioritize being with others over her obsession with being important. But no, they just say “Nah” and move on. Sure I guess?

RELIGION:

I won’t go as in-depth here as I did the relationships, but there were multiple MUTLIPLE times we see the cracks in the facade of their religion after Tirne is cast out of it.

We begin with her having a less than stellar relationship with her aunt, who has rejected the main religion to follow a more offshoot one that focuses on the creatures who remained after the 4 season gods defeated the master of those monsters. Tirne doesn't believe in those monsters at all, and her aunt thinks that the gods are poisoning the world with their magic - and so, their relationship has frayed beyond repair.

However, when Tirne is cast out of the temple and must live on her own, she reconciles with her aunt and slowly starts to see the legitimacy in what her aunt believes. Tirne is told a hidden truth in the history of their religion by Autumn - a secret so major that she can’t tell a single other person - but refuses to see her aunt’s point of view when she says that there are two sides to every story. Even when Tirne begins seeing the creatures and monsters, she only “joins” that religion when she has nothing else to turn to - and even tells Autumn that she never abandoned him or her beliefs. This I understand, but it seems that the second her aunt dies and they fix the Mirror, Tirne goes back to Square One and never even THINKS about the truths she discovered away from the temple, and from her aunt.

This also goes into the conflict caused by the main bad guy, who is the cast away god from their religion origin story. He doesn’t seem to have much of a plan, and then at the very end he simply just tries to stab Autumn as he is fully mortal, rather than killing him in his sleep - as he could have very easily done. His reasoning is that by doing this he proves to the people that the gods are fallible, but I think a god dying would ALSO do that, no? However, because he randomly does this in a crowd of people he’s immediately caught and his blood is drained to fix the Mirror. The End. (What????)

This is what I mean by saying I think this novel would highly benefit from a sequel. As both the relationships and the religion are kind of shuffled back to the same status quo we had at the beginning of the novel, and unless this is further explored it kind of feels like a “what was the point?” to the reader.

A sequel could explore the issues with the religion, now that Tirne is no longer the Herald of Autumn and an important member of it. It could give context to the villain’s motivation (who was in a relationship with her best friend and may have had feelings for him) - where we could find out that using his blood on the mirror to fix it, and “killing” him, was his original plan all along. We could also learn more about the truths of the religion, and whether or not Autumn and the other gods are really as benevolent and trustworthy as they seem. And finally, we could explore her relationship with Sidriel as they both learn to live with one another without the issue of the Mirror or past lies hanging over their heads.

In all honesty, if we get a sequel I think I’d enjoy this first book much more, as my issues are with this novel being a supposed “standalone,” where it brings up a bunch of issues and then never solves them by the end.