perfectly mediocre. 

I don't want to be mean in saying that, but everything about this book has been done better. For a debut, it's good, but it needed more work. The writing style was basic (I will say it was much better in the snippet of the next boom which makes me slightly more inclined to continue with the series), the characters felt a bit flat, lacking some depth and nuance, and in trying to set this book in Scotland instead of a fictitious world, the author created a lot of problems for herself. First, it was hard to place the time period as the silhouettes of the skirts described do not line up with the early 1900s, despite all other clues (electricity and locomotives) suggesting that is when this takes place. If the faeries end up instigating WWI in the next book I'll let this slide, but historical fantasty was not the right move. 

I think this would be a good introduction to fantasy for a newer reader of the genera, as it has a lot of very popular tropes. They were all surface level and not overly developed, but not terribly executed either. It's one of those books where you sit there thinking oh if these few things were tweaked or changed this wiild be an easy 4 or 5 Star read because there is honeslty nothing wrong with the book, it's just painfully mediocre at times and struggled to stand out in any meaningful way. This was published in 2014 before we had such a great fantasy boom, so I'm not sure it woild recieve the attention it got back then if it was published today.

I do think trying to set this in historic Scotland is what truly limited this book's potential. I  an alternative world, it could be well known that faeries are doing their faeries business, thus creating new challenges for the MC to keep her faerie murdering under wraps. Also, I think having a generic monster would have been better than faeries, it seemed so out of place at times save for the fact that it's in Scotland and that's the place of faerie stories. That also could have pushed the author to develop the monsters a bit more, as the faeries felt very monolithic despite attempts to make different types and ranks of faeries. It never felt truly clear what the real threat was besides them killing people and having some powers. 

I have a lot to say about how the MC was trained to do this battle as well. A lot of it would be solved if the characters weren't so flat. It makes it hard to see why Kiaran is even bothering with the MC when she is so Vengeful and clearly unable to overcome it, and the reasoning feel like a cop out. It makes the end battle feel unearned in my opinion. 

All of these are more symptoms of mediocrity, because nothing felt bad per se, just not particularly good either. It's a good foundation, however, you can't live in a foundation, you need to finish your house.