I think there's a lot of aspects that could have made this book stronger, but in the end I did still enjoy parts of it, and there were quite a few aspects that made the book stand out for me. That said, I'm still not sure if I'll be reading the sequel.

The world in this series, while interesting and well-developed, is delivered a bit too thickly in the beginning, and left some members of the book club I was reading with, myself included, lost at first. So many details were passed out in the first few chapters that ended up being integral to understanding the situation Amora finds herself in later, and not recalling all those details sometimes negatively impacted the reading experience. I feel like the author could have easily spread out the world building a bit more, as many chapters later on were thin on world development. In the end, the book found its stride though, at least in terms of the world the story is situated in.

Amora as a character is honestly quite interesting, but not always in the best ways. She spends most of the book fully sure in her duty and right to rule, even though she's lacking many traits that a good ruler needs (like... knowledge of her kingdom). She's in general extremely naive yet overly confident, and for a majority of the book these traits clash dramatically. It makes her feel inconsistent as a character overall, and it isn't until characters around her (namely Ferrick) start pointing out these flaws that she begins to grow (and even then, it takes a while to kick in). However,

Spoiler

she finally realizes by the end that the monarchy may not be the best for Visidia, at least not with Montaras at the helm. This realization is immediately pushed away though, with her father insisting that while he was a cowardly king, she'll make for a much better ruler. I'm hoping her realization, and the depth that it adds to her character, sticks, but I'm not sure

Depth is something that this book is overall lacking in my opinion. For a majority of the book, this book seems to deal with deeper, darker topics, but lacks the ability to handle those topics properly. While there's something beautiful about most of the descriptions in the story, and I felt I could vividly picture most of the settings, it seemed liked glitter to hide the book's overall flaws. Near the end, these deeper topics (the life of one for many, rightness to rule, etc.) were touched on more fully, and I feel like the book was really getting somewhere in the final scenes

Spoiler

where Amora's father admitted his mistakes to her, and she seemed to consider them and the motivations he had for them

, but it felt a little to late. Honestly, I think the characters overall just didn't do it for me, and weren't able to carry the weight of the story itself. I spent most of the book annoyed with Amora's inconsistency, Ferrick only started growing on me when he stopped taking Amora's insults/unfair treatment, and I only liked Bastian about half the time. However, I do believe all three of them grew quite a bit from the beginning to the end of this book, and it makes me more hopeful for the sequel overall.

Honestly, rating and judging this book is tricky because there are some aspects that I thought were really well done, or on the border of being well done, but there were also many scenes, themes, and characters that felt a little weak to me, and hindered my overall enjoyment of the book.