This had a lot of elements of an adult book

Spoiler

(Casual sex, abortion, loss of fingers due to frostbite instead of everything ending perfectly, death of a main character offscreen, love interest has a child already)

but all the immaturity one would expect of a young adult character. Fire is immature to the point of making me roll my eyes as she whines about everything. "I'm too pretty, I don't want to read minds, I don't want to control people, blah blah blah."

I thought the tie-in that made it clear it was pre-Graceling was interesting, but I wish it had contributed more to the plotline. Nothing happens for the majority of the book except for Fire realizing she needs to actually use her powers.

It was never clear what, exactly, a monster was. She has to be human because she can breed with humans, but for some reason there are also monster bugs and monster birds and they all want to eat each other, Fire included.

Very little about this world made sense. It was too different, both world-wise and plot-wise, from Graceling to make me accept it as a companion.