Umm so... this was bad. For my tastes, this was just laughably bad. 

I've listened to the whole thing and have no idea what happened or why I was supposed to care. The reveal meant nothing to me, I had no connection to the characters, the magic system was fairly boring, and it was riddled with the theme/trope I hate most of being treated differently because one is dark skinned. 

I just cannot with this. If not for what was obviously good research and an attempt to build a cohesive world it would have been a 1 star. I’ve given it a 2 here but on Storygraph it will definitely get a 1.5. 

I received this book from Goldsboro a few years ago and kept it on the shelf as the cover and blurb looked great. I was ready to be invested in some epic fantasy from a female author and thought this might be something good in that vein. This was not to be the case and I just felt really disappointed and unsatisfied for every second of it. 

In this world divided by some dark rift, there is a school of mages who know how to fight each other mentally called mind linking. There are novices who want to be like the revered mages but one such novice is called Isha and she has a big ‘ole tattoo on her face that sets her a part as an ‘Other’ that of course nobody likes and treats like shit. There are horned creatures and other such beings who are also treated as second class citizens for no other reason it seems then to just have people to disrespect. 

Alongside Isha is some random dude called Tatters – what a shit name) who is [a] Collarbound? Not really sure of the terminology but it means, hey, you guessed it, he’s a slave. But get this friends, he’s a runaway slave hiding out from his masters with a some kind of mental bestie who constantly talks into his head. They tried to make this slave element a little less offensive by making him white but then hey, we’re not down for slavery whatever race so why is this even here. Why is he collarbound? Who is he running from? Why has no one returned him to his master if this collar is so noticeable? Why is this grown man chilling with kids in a tavern? Don’t you have any friends dude? 

The whole thing is just a mess of forced mystery and murky details that was just so incredibly boring all the way through. The audio was only six or so hours on 1.7x and that still wasn’t fast enough. I really wanted to find something different for once but this wasn’t it. I can respect lyrical prose as much as anyone but I need my books to, I dunno, have a point maybe?