I got an ARC from Netgalley, all thoughts are 10000% my own.

I was a bit sceptical at the beginning, unsure why we start with Ziggy's, Nils, and Petars back stories. I was impatient to get to the "start" of the story, the point where all main characters meet up and go on their quest. But oh how wrong I was to be impatient. Looking back, and likely when I will inevitably reread this masterpiece, every single introduction is so important. We need to see these three at their lowest. We need to understand where they come from. And it's so masterfully interwoven with their respective arc, or in Petars case, the arc I expect to come. Especially Ziggy, arguably the main character, has a fantastic transformation over the course of the book, while never feeling like a different character. Everything he does fits perfectly with what we have already seen of him, the heroic deeds, as well as the cowardly ones. Of course he's the last to use his powers. Of course he's the one to give the speech at the funeral. It all fits so perfectly.

So yes. This story takes its time. And it's all the better for it. We need every single problem these characters face, so that they can grow on it. We need them to dance back and forth between utter trust in Kornelius and doubting him heavily. Because we the reader can never be sure to trust him.

This book is very dark, and I definitely would have wept had I not read the last few chapters in public. It's so tragic and unapologetically grim. At the start, it may be a bit too much, and you might wanna put it down, but as the characters have to face this, so do we.

My only issue throughout the book, was that we knew too little about two of our leads, namely Zlata and Oscar. But both of them received focus in the later half, that other MCs got during the first half, so I cannot even complain about that.

Thank you so much for letting me read this book for free and be assured that I'm grabbing a physical copy as soon as I'm at work next. I'll recommend this to every dark fantasy reader I know. A fantastic debut that simply leaves you yearning for more