After a slew of pretty poor romantasy reads, I was thinking that maybe my foray into the genre was going to be a short one.

And then I read this one. I could not put this down. I would say that while the relationship between them is central to this book, it is by far not the only facet here and it's not full of romance and sex. And that is the sort of thing I am here for!

I loved Oraya. And I loved the relationship between her and Raihn. The world building in this was great, I felt it could have been developed a bit more, I'm interested in the history and the politics of it all and I feel there were questions that needed answering but I think the balance here was largely good and it wasn't info dumped on you, it was weaved into the story well.

I really loved the mirroring of Nyaxia's journey to find Alarus and the foreshadowing between Oraya and Raihn.

The complexities of their self-loathing were fantastic.

I felt the end was a *bit* rushed. But it did kind of give an out of control feeling, a plot that was running away with itself before anyone could really think about it which, given the circumstances, is entirely appropriate. I felt deflated at the end, the wind blown out of my sails after being carried along with it all - I am excited and nervous to see how it develops into the next book!