I'm really sad to dnf this book because I am both a Filipina and an Arizonan. Alex's welcome banquet? I love that scene so much, but this book is just A LOT. It is constantly throwing new things at you, it wants to shove in every fairytale and legend that it can, and to be honest I thought it was cool at first how the world had so much, but then there had to be a character from each (and so many of the characters felt like they were basically the same person). This is only the first book, everything didn't have to be jammed into it.

In the acknowledgments at the end of the book, Chupeco said this was the first book that she wrote, and it felt like it, and I'm just sad that I can't love it as much as I wanted to.