I received this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This has not influenced my review.

This book started off very strong and remained so for a good 60% of the book, which is high praise considering how long this is. It's very long.

This book did many things right. It handled the multiple perspectives and the switching between them very well as well as it did a very good job building up the romance. I honestly believed that the character loved each other more than the initial "love at first sight"/lust scenario that I often end up reading about. They truly cared for each other and wanted to spend their lives together.

There was a subplot having to do with the politics and marriage alliances. It didn't really come into play until 1/2 way through the book but the first half was littered with seeds so it did not spring up out of anywhere. However, I feel like that part of the book was a bit weaker and more boring as it involved a lot of inner reflection and people just running around and reacting to circumstances and it was the part that brought this down from four stars to three.

The first half was by far the strongest. The speech of all the characters was different than our own which nicely reflected the medieval influenced society as well as the fact that the world is entirely fictitious. It was refreshing. However, this did get tiresome in the latter half of the book. I'm not sure if the writing quality dipped but phases included "yesternight" and "belike" in particular started to sound a bit cheesy. The author did have a large vocabulary which she used excellently. I came across some ancient words I've never read before and was quite glad my kindle dictionary could enlighten me on adjectives being used a way I'd never seen them before (like steepled) or words I'd plainly never heard or read before (like moue). While it was pretty obvious of their meaning through the sentences, I still looked up the definitions out of curiosity and was impressed.

I think fans of the romance genre will enjoy the romance. It was strong and prevalent. There was a bit too much obsessing over one's scent for my liking. With a paragraph dedicated to it in chapter 19:
"Her scent called him. Despite mingled odours of fear and fresh blood and his own sweat, her unique scent teased at his nostrils, arising from her hair, her throat, the delicate shell of her ear. For three heavy heartbeats Naed surrendered, covering her with his body, infusing her with the heating venting from his skin, wanting nothing more than to wrap his arms around her and quiet her shaking."
There was also lots of talk of caged beasts that made me think of werewolves and a supreme protectiveness after the wedding on the last 20% of the book that manifested in Nead thing "Mine" whenever he saw Raell. Those were the only thing that stood out to me though and rest was very enjoyable.

In the end, I think I was hoping for a bit more fantasy than just an alternate world, but the battling and the different culture were done well though I did wish some character had difference vocabulary set or cadence/accent to the way they spoke to distance characters from other countries than just them constantly mentioning how different their customs were. I do think there is precedent for more fantasy, at least in terms of the mythology of the world with the necklaces at appeared throughout the book and it's something that might convince me to pick up the sequel to see if it gets fleshed out more.

So, in conclusion, this is a solid romance in its own world book for people who like historical romance but are bored with the current tropes/time periods/what have you in the genre.