This was not an enjoyable read. The premise sounds fine and the cover is gorgeous, but unfortunately they don't make a good book. I'm tired of YA fantasy books that give the impression as if the author thinks it's okay to cut corners because it's YA.

My biggest issue was that the conflict at the heart of the story made absolutely no sense. The Sea Queen wanted Lira to be a killer, but when she is, she doesn't like it. I tried to explain it by telling myself that she was just jealous because she knew she'd have to pass over her throne, but even that was just... flimsy. Lira says they are raised to be killers, they are a race of killers, it's in their nature. Only it clearly isn't, it's the Sea Queen that wants them to kill for some unknown reason. The reasoning why everything is happening was utter nonsense.

The characters were drier than sawdust, the dialogue and banter juvenile and annoying. It was really hard to root for anyone in this story. It's rare for characters to stir no emotions in me. It didn't help that there was no chemistry between Elian and Lira and why they ended up in love is a mystery to me. Elian was such an unpleasant character overall, boasting about how he's this great pirate with an amazing ship and everyone fears him, and I just couldn't see why. If he was a person, he'd be an Andrew Tate follower.

The ending.. don't even get me started. Throughout the book we are told of this land of extreme cold, a journey to a mountain that only the royal family survives. And then there's the fight scene where apparently the cold didn't exist anymore? Suddenly nobody is hampered by their heavy and thick clothes (if they even had them, because like I said, it's like the cold wasn't an issue anymore), people were in a moat full of water (which, by some miracle, was not frozen in this land of extreme cold) and didn't even flinch. The way everything happened was just very convenient. Also, Pagos was chosen to be the hiding place of the Eye of Keto because it's the furthest from the sea and the mountain is in the centre of their world, but they went there by ship, so how exactly is it the furthest place? Make it make sense.

Also, I realise writers stretch the boundaries of language, but you can't just use random verbs with nouns they have no business being used with (looking at you, whimpering light, sweating wind and moaning thunder).