Philosophically speaking, the winner's curse/Pyrrhic victory has always fascinated me; however, I think the author fixated too much on the premise, to the point of not really fleshing out the characters and setting. I enjoyed the plot, but I sympathized only minimally with Arin and barely at all with Kestrel - particularly since neither of them seemed to have any real flaws ("each other" and "love of music" are not valid weaknesses), and that's always a huge detractor for me.

For all Kestrel was portrayed as an independent young woman who wanted to make her own path, it was obvious that she was very much a product of her society - the way she "couldn't help" strategizing and scheming, the way she

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resigned herself to enlisting after realizing she couldn't accept Ronan's proposal because she loved Arin - which, I thought there was insufficient development for that relationship; it mostly works because it's predictable

, even her sense of morality. And it wasn't a society that I was really invested in, either; it didn't seem very fleshed-out, so I felt estranged from it throughout the story.