If I’m completely honest, I bought this book because I loved the embossing underneath the dust jacket of the hardcover edition. I added it to my collection of fantasy books that I swore I would read at some point, and I finally picked it up last week. I’m still processing everything that happens in this book, but I will say that I can understand what all the hype is about.

My favourite thing about this book was how complex all the characters were. Jude is brilliant, driven, and conniving; she’s learned how to be ruthless from Madoc, and I enjoyed her character development. I found Carden to be interesting because a lot was going on underneath his reckless and cruel front. I think that both Jude and Cardan are morally gray characters, and I can understand why so many people ship them together. I loved Vivienne, and I hope she appears in the rest of the series because I’d love to know more about her and Heather. I had a lot of issues with Taryn, and she ended up being one of my least favourite characters. I also love Ghost, Roach, and Bomb, and I loved reading about their sneaking around and plotting.

I found this book to be a bit stressful to read because there was so much going on. A lot of bad things happen to the characters and every time something bad happened, I would get stressed out. This book was full of plot twists, which kept me on the edge of my seat, but it also fueled the stress as I was reading. I found some scenes in this book to be shockingly violent, but I don’t know if they’re actually violent for the genre because I read mostly contemporary, and it’s been a while since I read a book with bloodshed.

I found Faerie to be an interesting place, but I wish we could have learned more about it. I wanted to know more about what everything looked like, what the various species looked like and what they wore, and stuff like that. I also want to learn more about the politics and different hierarchies of Faerie, because I find that kind of stuff interesting. Fortunately, this is the first book in a series, so I’m sure I’ll be able to learn more about Faerie when I read The Wicked King and The Queen of Nothing.

Overall, I enjoyed this book. I thought a lot of it had been spoiled for me because it’s so popular, and I thought I knew the gist of what was going to happen, but I ended up being completely surprised by a lot of the plot twists. I liked most of the characters, and I like how complex and morally gray a lot of them are. I’m glad that I finally picked this book up, and I’m looking forward to reading the rest of the trilogy soon.