3.5 stars

Picture this:
You're sitting at a restaurant. Everyone's told you that this place is great, so you're expecting the absolute best food. You spot the waiter heading straight for you. He sets this beauty down on your table:


It looks great. It smells great. Your mouth waters while he pours your wine. He leaves, and you don't hesitate before tucking right the heck in.

... and something isn't right. The meat's cooked to perfection, just the way you like it. The vegetables are hot, and crisp and the consistency of the reduction sauce is absolutely perfect, and the mash is so brilliant it reminds you of your mom's cooking.

But nothing has been seasoned. Everything, from the steak to the sauce is COMPLETELY LACKING SALT, PEPPER AND/OR CHILI. It's bland. Everything is bland. You can't even taste the tiniest squeeze of lemon.

This meal? This horribly disappointing meal that COULD HAVE BEEN SO GREAT? That was this book.

I liked the premise of this. I liked every single plot point. I liked the characters. I shipped the ship (more on this in a bit). So why did I give this book only 3.5 stars? I'll tell you why. I severely disliked the writing.

The writing, simply put, was lackluster. There was not much variation in sentence length, the tone of the whole thing was dry, and honestly, Yelena's narration bothered the hell out of me. Considering the setting of this book, you really don't expect the heroine to say things like "Decked out in". But that's what she did. There was a lot about her narrative that sounded much too modern for this book.

And because of the try tone, a lot of the emotions fell flat. I mean, I should have cared when

Rand turned out to be the mole

, but I didn't. I should have cared when when

Rand died

, but I didn't. I cared when

Janco was injured

but not as much as I would have if the writing had been more evocative.

So disappointing.

And the romance. God. Where the heck did that even come from? Yes, yes, I know they knew each other for a year, but WE DIDN'T SEE THEM FALL IN LOVE. That romance just popped out of nowhere.

And usually this means that I won't ship a couple, because, we all know that I need solid foundation. But there are a lot of things I liked about Yelena and Varek. I like that they don't NEED each other. I like that they're not soppy or clingy. I like that Varek was able to say, "You know what, this is something you need to do. We'll make it. We can do this long distance thing". I also like the age gap.

HEAR ME OUT, OKAY. This is unusual. She's 19 and he's 33. The only time you see this kind of age gap, one of them is immortal or close to it. Unless you're reading a cliche NA contemporary about problematic student/teacher relationships. Then, okay, not so unusual. But for a fantasy novel to have a 14 year age gap between a VERY MUCH HUMAN couple? That's new. At least, it's new for me. And I liked it.

Sigh.

That's it really. That was my only issue - the writing. Which is sad because the writing affects so many aspects of any book. But that being said, I was getting some serious Sarah J. Maas vibes from this, so I'm pretty sure this will get better as the series progresses.

(Don't you even dare tell me that Throne of Glasses wasn't flawed as heck. All those exclams. God)

And besides - this was entertaining. I will be continuing.