Eliyana Ember has been ashamed of the birthmark covering her ace for her entire life. Soon after her mother dies in mysterious circumstances, El is thrust into a world beyond her own and further than she could ever imagined. Suddenly, her birthmark means something special and she's among people who can transform their bodies, paralyze with a look and choose between the paths of Light or Darkness.

The world in this book is really fantastic and so amazingly detailed. It took me a while to really get used to what the 'reflections' were but gradually it started to make a bit more sense to me the more the characters all talked about the reflections, and the thresholds.

Unfortunately for me, one of the main problems I had with this book was Eliyana. I really didn't like her! Obviosuly at the start of the book she is grieving and I do try and feel for her but she rapidly devolves into a whingy, moany mess that got on my nerves. She gave out about everything and the way she repeatedly talked about Joshua did my head in. At one point she even gave out about him not noticing her tripping up, like really? For the majority of the book she remains like this, and is also extremely prissy and judgmental (something I was surprised by considering she has dealt with judgement over her birthmark all her life). One thing that really irritated me was her comments when people were eating meat around her. I'm a vegetarian but I don't judge, or make nasty comments, about people who do as I understand it's a lifestyle choice and harder for some to make than others. I didn't appreciate her comments and felt like it was the type of thing that encourages all those stupid assumptions people make about vegetarians and vegans.

I did really like Ky and his character development. He slowly, slowly came out as the story progressed and he went from a spotty, nerdy kind of guy to someone very brave and open-hearted.I really liked our journey with him and how I was never quite sure if I could really trust him or not. But by the end of the book I was 100% Team Ky. I will say as well, I liked how the love triangle played out in this book and the way it's connected to Verity and the Void. It's pretty clever and avoids some of the cliches around love triangles. Though, I still hated Joshua.

There were a few too many movie and song references in this for me too. I don't think the book really needed it - the writing was strong enough to stand on its own without the references.

Following the ending, I am looking forward to moving onto Unravelling and seeing what happens next.