I have conflicted feelings about this book. It caused me a lot of stress. It was slow going at the beginning of this, and for DAYS I struggled to find any motivation whatsoever to even pick it up. It was the slowest start to a book I've had in quite awhile. When I finished this last night, I was confused and a bit annoyed with it all, but after sleeping on it, I woke up with a strong urge to read the next book immediately and it made me look on this book more positively, so I bumped up my 3-star rating to a 4.

First, a sidenote. I've seen praises for the worldbuilding of this series everywhere, but I'll admit that I was pretty confused for most of the book. THIS IS MY FAULT. There's a handy-dandy guide at the beginning of the book that details all the different tribes and such, and it's SUPER FRICKIN' IMPORTANT TO READ. If I had actually paid attention to that in the first place, I think I would've enjoyed the book more.

OK, so moving on to why I was confused and annoyed by this book originally. Let me start by saying that I'm a big romance person. I look for romance in every book I read, and if there isn't much of one (or one I dislike), it definitely takes me out of the book (with a few exceptions). At the start, I could clearly see the romance forming between Dara and Nahri, and they were nice!... at first. Once they got to Daevabad and Nahri met Ali-- it was all over. I liked Ali a lot, and as the book prorgressed I really looked forward to his chapters. Ali and Nahri's dynamic is one that I am ALWAYS into, so I was cautiously excited. And Dara just got progressively worse. He was rash and rude and all of the stories about him just sounded terrifying. But still, Nahri stubbornly clung to him and forced me to deal with the conflicting emotions of being on the wrong side of what was looking like a love triangle. I DID NOT WANT THAT PAIN. But I couldn't help the fact that I just flat out prefer Ali. LOVE TRIANGLES IN OUR YEAR 2020 GOOD GOD!!!

All that being said, I enjoyed the overall plot. More so now that I've started the sequel. My favorite scenes were between Nahri and Ali (DUH) but I wish I had seen MORE of stuff. Like, we just skim over Dara and Nahri spending TWO MONTHS in the desert and suddenly she loves him?? Ugh. And then Nahri and Ali spend WEEKS together cultivating a friendship that we see almost none of before we're thrown into the thick of it. I just can't stand time jumping where it feels like I'm missing things I'd really love to see. The side characters in this were fine, but not suuuuper memorable (besides Muntadhir and Ghassan) but it looks like the sequel will definitely flesh everyone out more, so I'm exctied about that!

I was really debating against continuing this series when I finished this last night. Especially seeing that Dara would have a POV in the next two books, which didn't sound particuarly fun to me. BUUUUT all I'll say is that some Empire of Gold reviews are making me think I should stick it out.... and I'm already a good chunk through Kingdom of Copper! Hopefully my luck wins out and I'll end this series in a better place than where I started.