the lush descriptive writing definitely saved this book for me; so much of the magic system and what was going on kind of confused, especially the flashbacks or the interjected stories. i nearly dnf’d after twenty chapters just because i didn’t feel like anything was going or anything interesting had happened, and the characters felt a bit flat. i’m glad i stuck with it, the world has been drawn beautifully by the author, the characters did flesh out, and i might pick up the sequel.