I honestly had fairly high expectations going into this book, and it ended up generally surpassing them anyways!

I wasn't entirely expecting a hardcore political fantasy from this, more just a competition amongst outcasts, so I was surprised by how in depth this story went into the politics of the world and characters' opinions of how it should be run. In the end, this book was mainly about the politics (and the characters and how they're situated in them within their empire/ruling families). It dealt with corruption, ignorance, oppression, and war, and used the characters as a way for the readers to experience everything that was wrong with the empire. In the end, the characters and politics bounced really well off of each other, and it made all the characters and their POVs feel integral to the story itself.

I also just generally liked all the characters, if not because they were a likable character then because they were well-written and fleshed out. For example,

Spoiler

I can't necessarily say I liked Hyperia by the end, but I could see how she came to be the person she is and why she made the decisions that she did. She was an understandable character, even if I couldn't personally agree with her

. There were also just some really strong characters arcs in this story, and all the the characters really had their own individual journeys as the story progressed, and which I'm super excited to follow even further in the next book. My favorites had to be Emilia and Vespir, with Emilia being an easy favorite from her first chapter. My love for Vespir grew more softly, as she grew out of her meek/shy shell into the strong character she ended up being

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(I loved seeing her take that race for herself! and her speech at the bar!

. I also liked that this book did not have a focus on romance at all. It meant the focus was more fully on the characters themselves and the politics/world, and I loved that!

The only thing that was originally a bit of a letdown was that I thought that all the characters would be full outcasts of society, not just the lowliest child of the royal families. Like, I expected to have a bunch of people who kinda knew what they were doing fighting it out for the crown, not a bunch of mildly incompetent kids who never trained for this. In the end, I did like what the book ended up being way more in the end, but I did have to alter my expectations first.

In the end, I genuinely liked this book a lot and I'm quite excited to see where the rest of the series goes!