~~Thank you to NetGalley and Page Street Publishing for the ARC!~~

2.5/5 stars rounded up.

This one's kinda a weird one for me. There are elements I really liked, but it's all mixed up in things I found lacking and boring? It's confusing, I know.

So, starting with the first thing I liked: the dialogue / character interactions. The conversations between Adra, her quartermaster/adopted sister Merrin, the Cameron captain decoy Quinn, and her human-turned-bird Diana were the scenes I found myself adoring the most, because so many of them put Adra's complexities, her thirst for revenge clashing with her desire to be a good captain, on full display. They also had such good chemistry, too; I love when authors manage to balance moral dubiousness with excellent character interactions and relations. Unfortunately, this is only extends to these four characters, because, despite this whole other crew underneath Adra's wing, the other side characters are rather one noted and dull. Toral's connected to the sea, Kaori is the brainy, gadget one, Rhys is the only boy who's the chef and doesn't have more than 10 lines of dialogue, and the rest don't really matter. (One of them does die within the last chapter of the book. The characters are mourning her, but I barely remembered she, Lilli, was a character until she died.) I can tell Ames was trying to make everyone as a whole memorable, and when it works, it works, just not for everyone.

It didn't really help that the worldbuilding is given in small chunks that are quickly wiped away before moving onto the next scene. The magic system isn't well explained, either, just that there were old gods that went away, left magic scraps behind, and some, like Merrin and Quinn, can use it. Anything besides the emphasis on the price paid when wielding it felt so vague that I gave up trying to fully understand it and went with whatever what was being said about it at the moment, because that's just how the story worked.

Despite how fast-paced the story was, it was simultaneously slow, too, given the sheer number of lengthy paragraphs describing the landscape or a fight scene. The scenery I get, but action/fight scenes need to be sharp and short, not blocky and overdrawn.

Another thing I liked was the Devourer. The beast's first proper introduction was splendidly creepy and filled with atmosphere; you really felt like the meeting of some Eldritch horror. The descriptions, the mannerisms, the backstory - I was all about it, especially when the narrative parallels the beast with Adra. Even though its presence looms heavily over the story til the end, the Devourer only has three major scenes: The introduction, a memory flashback via other characters having nightmares about it, and in the one of the last chapters. I found this disappointing, because, as the titular character, I wanted the monster to have more of a physical presence.

As for the story - it felt incomplete. From the beginning, we're just dropped in the middle of the narrative where Adra is well on her revenge journey with only a small exposition dump of why/what she's doing. This threw me so much because I felt like I had opened the book fifty or so pages into the story rather than starting on page one. But then we get to the climax - Adra killing Cameron, who was only introduced in-person, outside of exposition or Adra's murder daydreams, in that same chapter - the falling action pummeled straight into the ground and crashed. We don't get to linger on Adra's conflicted feelings on achieving revenge or the complex feelings that arose between she and Merrin afterwards. Nope, the book just ends with a "Where to next, guys?" There are so many lingering plot threads that were never addressed, like reversing Diana's transformation or the romance between Adra and Quinn, but nothing after Cameron's death indicated that the story could continue pursuing any of them. The narrative just . . . dropped itself right there. I would be baffled if I cared more, but I can't muster the energy to care right now.

All in all, conflicted feelings aside, I would still say there are good qualities from this book. In variety, granted, but there, nonetheless. I don't know if I would properly recommend this book to anyone, but if I meet someone who was absolutely diehard for another pirate story to read, I would point them to this book if they want complex woman leads and good dialogue / interaction.

I was sent this book by the publisher!

This was a really fun read!! I was immediately hooked into the story and these characters. I was rooting for them to succeed and wanted to know more about everyone. I would've loved to have gotten to know the crew a bit more as certain scenes could've had bigger emotional impact that way. but I was very invested in the main characters! Diana was probably my favourite because who doesn't love a talking bird? I also didn't predict where everything was going and was shocked multiple times which I found very enjoyable. overall, this fairly fast paced story about pirates, sea creatures, revenge, and sapphic relationships hit for me.