This world has been inescapable to my thoughts. The character’s hearts beat in mine. The magnificence of the dragons and the potential world politics and events that lie ahead encaptures my imagination.

I went into this series knowing and finding along the way a couple of major spoilers but luckily not too much about the plot. But that hasn’t stopped me falling head first into Basgiath.

This is such a rich book. The scenes are perfectly paced, so it gives the book a full and accomplished plot. There was very minimal difficulties getting into the start of this fantasy novel, which is a great accomplishment of the author. The little things that make each character a person were so subtly placed, allowing me to get to know them comfortably. The war college setting of this first novel has provided the perfect narrative to be able to comfortably learn the world and to become personal with many of the characters.

I was a little apprehensive with the blurb and being in a world of dragons. But this book is an adult fantasy, it’s modernly written alike other fantasies of today, and the dragons and riding them are epic. I cannot recommend this book enough.

I was distraught when Liam died. Although I had a feeling early on when he gave Violet the wooden carving of Tairn and he mentioned he hadn’t seen Andarna enough to carve her yet, I knew that the plot wasn’t looking in his favour. But I’d forgotten that worry by the time my heart was ripped out. I understand not all her friends could survive with the Basgiath death toll numbers against them, and I’m happy this first book made point to confirm there would be no plot/character body armour. But I felt we should have had him maybe for another book, it’s going to be a great loss to the character dynamics.

Sometimes descriptions weren’t the best, in terms of positioning. Such as imagining a building layout. Or movements between characters. One I can maybe remember was a character seemingly moving their arm into a position twice. Fight sequences were sometimes hard to visualise the exact movement. Locations are hard to imagine from descriptions and the maps were disappointedly wrong. Basgiath map seamed upside down and locations weren’t adding up in relation to each other on the continent map and most places were omitted from there anyway. I now understand Violet has a connective tissue disorder, like the author. But this wasn’t particularly clear in the book, so came across as just really exaggerating how weak the main character was, and it became tiresome at the beginning. However, all these specific criticisms seamed to reduce further into the book.

I would say, for a really clever character like Violet, love really did make her slow on the uptake of some things.

Also I appreciate ebbs and flows in stories, but sometimes I felt too detached from characters. Especially when in situations that the character(s) are around Violet rather than at a different location, but the focus is on specific scenes with others.

I’ve grown tired of the trope of destroying the character of the soft and warm friend / potential love interest, for the dark and mysterious, long-burn love interest. I appreciate Dain showed his overbearingness from the beginning, so it wasn’t destroying his character. And I appreciate if both Dain and Xaden were strong contenders, then we’d be dangerously near the love triangle trope. But I wish the true love interest character was built more from themselves, rather than in comparison to pulling apart another character. I guess more than anything, I’m fed up of those characters who are wasted/ruined with their main purpose being this character type.

This book is magnificent. This has become my favourite book.