Arrah has been desperate for a whisper of magic all her life, as she was born to two of the most powerful witchdoctors of their generation. When her loved ones and city are put in danger, and magic still refuses to answer her call, Arrah must seek out other ways to make the magic do her bidding. But is she willing to pay the price?

I was lucky enough to be chosen for the cross-country travelling ARC initiative, and even though the book wasn’t for me I absolutely support the idea! This one ARC is giving so many teen and POC reviewers the chance to read and review the ARC early without requiring a large following or hundreds of ARC copies. I was only 4th in this chain of readers, but I’m happy so many people are getting the chance to read this single copy of the book!

This book is a difficult one to discuss for me, mainly because I really wanted to enjoy it and I need for there to be more POC written fantasy with POC characters in YA and fantasy in general. Unfortunately, while I loved many of the background aspects of this book, I just couldn’t click with the characters or the way this story was told.

This book’s main issue was that it was way too ambitious for both a debut and a first book in a series. There was just so much in this book to digest, and I still don’t think I’ve fully finished understanding and thinking through all of it. It’s not only thick, but dense as well, and chock-full of just too much plot, action, and death. This book alone could have served as an entire series on its own with its plotline, as the book seems to follow the chain of exposition -> rising action -> climax -> falling action quite a few times. It was just too much for me as a reader alongside understanding the world and the lore woven into the novel as well.

However, my biggest personal issue was the hopelessness of most of the novel. This novel gets really dark really fast, and I get that comes with demons, but the utter despair that this book emanates from 20%-90% with no hope of a true resolution put me off a whole lot. It seemed like the only way this could turn around was with a miracle, and instead of it reading as a struggle between the main cast and this evil, it seemed more like continuous beat down of the main cast as their loved ones were all slowly killed off. (Seriously, almost every single character you’re introduced to in the first 10-20% of the novel is dead by the end). Don’t get me wrong, I like dark books and dark magic and dark villains, but I need some balance. It needs to be a battle/war that the main character seems to have some feasible chance of winning for me to stay invested.

Even with all those issues, I have to commend the author on the world and lore she created for the story and the way morality is played with in this book. The world seems to be incredibly diverse naturally, it doesn’t seem forced at all. Additionally, I absolutely loved the lore/religion of the world and how it factored into the plot itself, especially all the reveals made at the end. You also have no sense of good and evil in this book as almost everyone seems to walk the line between the two, with Arrah trying desperately to figure out which side to stake her life on. It was fascinating to analyze and read from that mindset alone.

I am extremely tempted to continue the series when the rest of the books come out, even with my disappointing experience with the first book, as I did really enjoy what the author was trying to do. Hopefully there’s a little more balance in book 2, and I don’t get the same strong feelings of despair and hopelessness.