First thing first: I'm a fan of All Soul Trilogy and the only similarity is that it features witches.
That said this was one of my top low fantasy books for 2022 as the blurb sounded promising and I couldn't wait to read it.
Let's say there's a lot of potential and it is an interesting book as it's a fantasy book with heavy speculative fiction undertones. The idea of coven more or less inclusive is not new and there's a lot of discussions about coven thare are inclusive or not.
I loved Theo and loved what Theo represent. Had fun in reading the pop references and think that there's enough stuff on the world building side for a huge series
I also loved the different POVs and voices
What I didn't like:
- The book starts after a witches-warlocks war that left a lot of divisions and sufferance. We now it affected the characters but not there's not a lot of details. A short stories introducing us would be great, a prequel even better
- Some characters are introduced and the disappear
- The fantasy parts is often in the background to the political part
- There's a sort of manicheism: characters are saints or villains. Sometimes they become villain and their story arc is a bit forced
- The final part is very rushed and I'm not sure I understood what meant
I liked it, I think this could become a very interesting series. This one is a 3.5 * upped to 4 for me
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine