I like when books surprise you and Raybearer was definitely a good surprise. Id had the FairyLoot edition of this for a while so was excited to finally get to it.

Raybearer is about a little girl named Tarisai who is basically starved of love while growing up in order to execute her mother’s - at the time unknown - heinous plot against the emperor of their land. The start of the story is rooted in mystery and African inspired genie type entities alongside some decent worldbuilding which really leapt of the page.

What let the book down however by the second half was that there was too much going on. More prophecies and lore and worlds etc was a bit of overkill. I found issues with the pacing and general country hoping that just felt to convenient and sometimes a little unnecessary. I was invested enough in the characters to want to see how it all turned out but the actual wrap up felt both a little convoluted as well as too easy.
The explanation wasnt nearly as complex as the roundabout way it took to get there so the realisations sort of lost their oomph.

Im interested to go onto book two and would recommend reading if you get a chance as it is turning into a netflix show!