You can see all my reviews here: Books Are The New Black

I went into this book without knowing anything but my love for Andrea Stewart's work. If you haven't read The Drowning Empire series by her, please do so. I recommend starting there. She's also a gem on Twitter(X). You should give her a follow. :)

Now, I want to start with the best part of this book- the world Stewart creates. It's so interesting, unique, and easy to follow. The world-building is captivating from the start! The magic was cool but very brutal. Throw in some gods and their ploys, and there is more chaos. I do want to know a little more about them and what happened. If we don't get that throughout the series, maybe a good prequel book about how that all went down.

I've seen a lot of reviews talking about character development, and I agree. There are several POVs thrown at you quickly. It was hard to follow some because we were just thrown into their subplot without any warning. I would have liked more development with our main two before jumping into so many characters. In this case, adding them in slowly would have helped others a lot. After getting used to their POVs, I didn't have an issue with it. I loved seeing how things are working on different sides of this story. I do think some of the POVs were much stronger though. Hakara and Thassir are my favorite POV to read about.

The romances in this book were harder for me. I am not a fan of instant love and we get a case of it here. It was so fast, and I had a harder time connecting to their relationship. I'm sure in fantasy world it was much longer, but it didn't translate. On the other hand, another romance is slow-build, and I loved it so much. I cannot wait to see where that one goes. It was well written, and it's much deeper. I don't want to delve into that anymore since I'm spoiler-free.

Overall, I enjoyed this one and cannot wait to get my hands on the second book! I understand that some people don't like the many POVs, but it's just timing. In time, they do help with the overall plot. I can't wait to see how many of the characters grow. I liked a lot of unique aspects of this fantasy. I think Stewart gave us a great start to this series!

I want to thank Orbit and Netgalley for an ARC! All thoughts and opinions are my own.