If you follow me, you know I love any kind of a retelling, and while I hadn't ever really read The Lady or the Tiger, I know the gist of that story, so it made this work for me. I love that we once again have a strong female character who is fighting to be her own person. The characters really had a lot going on, lots of good background stories that really tied in to wrap the whole story together. Each little history for the characters brought it all in to make the ending and the way things wrapped up perfect. The fight that you knew had to come at the end was different than it was originally planned or even how you thought it would be as the story progressed. But it wasn't just an easy win for her, an all of a sudden it just is easy for her, she's suddenly better than Rodric after her short time training with Cion. It was still a hard fight, and she had to use the things she'd learned, but also apply them to new situations or things as they happened in the moment.

The setting was beautiful, the whole story was beautifully told and imagined, and I look forward to reading more by this author in the future!