3.5 stars

I received a free copy of this book from Paper Lanter Lit in exchange for an honest review.

This book takes place in the Macedon, a country in ancient Greece, and follows a teenage Alexander (who would later become known as Alexander the Great) and his struggles to gain some authority among his father's lords and leaders as the heir to the kingdom. In other parts of the world, Katerina sets out on a mission to kill the Queen, Zo runs away to find her lover and eventually on a search to change her fate, Jacob enters a tournament in order to gain notoriety and the love of Kat and Alexander's best friend Heph struggles with self-doubt and his place in the world.

I had heard some mixed reviews about this book and so I had some doubts going into this, though I do really enjoy stories set in Ancient Rome and Greece and this is a book that has intrigued me for some time. However, I found it a mostly entertaining book and I was really into the story. I really enjoyed most of the characters and my favorites were probably Kat and Alex, though I have to say the link between them was very obvious and I saw it coming from a mile off.

I think the main problem with this book was a lot of information was squashed into the one book and I feel like because the author was trying to tell so many different character's POVs, a lot of them became very rushed. When Katerina visits a woman called Ada who can help her with some special abilities, what seemed like weeks of training was fit into one page. I love reading books that have training in them and learning new skills so I was disappointed that we got nothing from Kat (also I don't believe she suddenly became a trained warrior after what could have been a couple of days or a few weeks, I have no idea of the timeline.) I feel because of the rush in squeezing in everything, some characters became flat and let down such as Jacob who honestly was more of a side character if anything. I would loved way more time with Zo as well as she honestly seemed to only have about 3 or 4 chapters compared to Kat and Alex and she had an interesting storyline as well.

I feel like the characters forced character traits as well at times and made them seem unnatural such as Heph's storyline. I really liked Heph and then it felt like teh author was trying to make me hate him but I couldn't. The same goes with Zo's captor near the end, who doesn't seem to be a terrible guy (despite the whole enslaving part but tbh even that seems out of character seeing as when we met him he was freeing the slaves in the first place!).

Overall, despite some of my problems with the book I definitely still enjoyed it and I was glued into the story. I am eager to see what happens next and will move on to the next book soon.