It took me a bit to get past the 100 pages to really get into this book, but thankfully it was worth it. The book did a really good job of conveying how brutal the society in the Empire is. There isn’t any explicit rape or sexual assault, however, it is implied that this is something that is common place, especially for slaves. It felt very much like a fantasy Roman Empire. There wasn’t much of an exploration of the fantasy aspect of the world. I’m hoping that we will get more details about it in the sequel.   
 
As far as our lead characters, Laia is the female lead, and she goes through A LOT within the first few pages of the book.  Her family is killed and her brother imprisoned or kidnapped. It was hard not to be on edge anytime Laia was interacting with anyone thereafter. The whole plot it is hard to tell who is trustworthy and who is not besides Elias and Laia. I never truly trusted Mazen, and boy, was I right. Helene was one of the more complicated characters as she obviously has strong romantic feelings for Elias, but she seemed so vehemently loyal to the Empire the whole book that it was difficult to pinpoint exactly where her moral lines were. This was also made more difficult by her clear prejudice against slaves. Helene believes that slaves have earned their position as lower class because they were unable to fight off the Empire essentially. Part of me was hoping that her negative attitude toward Laia was due to just jealousy, but there is definitely discrimination for the entire class of slaves mixed in.  Besides that, her character development seems to rely heavily on Elias. That is also partly because the story is told from Laia and Elias’ perspective, I think. It would be interesting to see things told from her point of view in future books. In addition to all this, I would like to know more about her powers, which is where the fantasy aspect of this world kicks in. I think it would also help flesh out her motivations better as her actions at the end of the book have made things very complicated. Marcus harassed her in most of the interactions they had in this book, so it’s going to be anything but comfortable for her to serve him in his new position as Emperor now. This was a decision she made because she didn’t have much of a choice, but that won’t make it any easier to have to see Elias as an enemy next time she sees him.  

There were a lot of morally grey decisions that were made by Elias and even Marcus. Despite what a horrible person Marcus is, I still feel terrible that he had to kill his younger brother, Zak. Elias is also going to be having nightmares for a long time of all the people he killed. Out of all the villainous characters in the book, though, I have to give it up for the Commandant. The woman is conniving as you can get and was able to get exactly what she wanted in the end by playing the Resistance and Laia. She is as cruel as the Empire she is a part of considering she uses her slave’s personal relationships against them and is completely willing to kill her son. Elias is a sweetheart in comparison and it’s so hard to fathom that she came out of that monster. Elias is shown to be very kind despite the despondent empire he is forced to live under. It really comes to show that people can choose to be better despite their environment. I’m looking forward to see how Elias and Laia work together in order to save her brother. Until the next installment for now.