This book took me a long time to read, which isn't super common for me. I just couldn't get into the story at first, and it felt like it was dragging on for the majority of the book. I got through it, though, and I'm glad I did. The ending wasn't surprising, per se, but it did make me immediately go and buy the second book so I could continue the story where it left off. The "twist" at the end (if you could even call it that) was expected. There really wasn't enough suggesting any other possible ending

besides Rishiana's death - I didn't expect that part

. For a fantasy, it didn't have a lot of characters (there were maybe 5 or 6 primary characters), which actually made it refreshingly easy to track who was who. The story itself was intriguing, though not super memorable, but I am looking forward to the next books in the series.

Spoilers:
High-level spoiler:

Why, oh why, did Ellina pledge allegiance to Farah? Like, I get the point that she's supposed to be a spy and feeding information to Dourin, but it just didn't make a whole lot of sense. Yes, she can lie in Elvish, and yes, that's a great skill for a spy to have. But why stay in that situation rather than encouraging a revolt so the citizens get Farah and Raffan out of power?