“Maybe they have broken you, but you are a sharper weapon because of it. And it is time to strike.”

Stars (Out of 10): 8/10 Stars

Favorite Character: Soren

Spoiler Free: I ended up enjoying this a lot more than expected to, especially considering the reviews claiming it was fairly tropey, and used a lot of traits that have become extremely common in YA Fantasy in general. I do agree with this, but the way the book was written, for me personally, used the tropes in an interesting and new way.

The main thing I enjoyed about this book was how it made me feel conflicted. Since our main character, Theo, can not easily make decisions on what she wants and who she’s willing to hurt/save, it makes it harder for me, as the reader, to decide what I want to happen. Especially when it came to her childhood friend, I was often found stuck on what path I wanted Theo to take, either one of a badass queen (who burned everything in her way) and a caring queen (who had a higher chance to fail).

The romance also followed this path. We have a standard love triangle, but it feels different than other love triangles I’ve read. The opposing choices aren’t unique, we have the childhood friend and the prince of the conquering kingdom. However, I normally do have a choice by the first book, of who I would prefer, but that isn’t the case here. It is written in such a way that you feel as conflicted as Theo, and the ending does even more to enhance this feeling.

Additionally, I really enjoyed the plot and the way it was written. Theo, after a certain point, becomes an active player in the kingdom, in her story, and yet we still manage to be surprised by some of the things she does, as the author did a good job of showing us enough of Theo to like her and cheer for her, but not everything that’s in her head, leaving some twists able to surprise us. I also really like where the ending went, and the setup it provided for the rest of the series (honestly really excited by the antagonist that the ending created).

I also liked the world, and the use of stones as bearers of magic. I especially liked how the magic system worked alongside the stones, and how the combination of both a strong belief, luck, and the stones themselves all worked together to create varying levels of magic users. It added another sort of hierarchy that went against the standard royal one.

The story was also rather dark, including a lot of the extreme hardships that the enslaved people had to face. While these moments are often unnecessary to the books, I feel it was necessary to the story in this case, as becoming less blind to those hardships was an integral part in forming Theo as a character, a rebel, and a queen.

In the end, I am really excited to see where this story continues to go, and cannot wait for the next installment!