I did not read much as a child. Just a couple of children's books. The first time I ever read a book for fun was Divergent that I got from my school library in high school. And I never looked back. So, Veronica Roth has been a very nostalgic part of my reading journey. I will probably never 'dislike' a book she writes. But I enjoyed this despite it being very different from my usual taste.

I don't recognize the author of this book as the same person who wrote the trilogy and I loved it. She has come so far.

I do not consider myself to be a harsh reviewer. When I don’t like a book, I usually chalk it up to it not being my taste or what I needed in the moment. If I bring up something that I find problematic, it’s because I could not keep that instance out of my head. And unfortunately there were a lot of those in this book. Or rather, a couple of issues that came up again and again.

One was the lack of female characters and how our narrator Helena was handled. There are 3 female characters besides our narrator. They all appear for 1 chapter each and it is telling how each of these characters are handled. I’ll avoid spoilers, so let’s just say it’s not a good look.

Although Helena is our narrator, she isn’t the main character. I think the author pretty much nailed the confused-figuring-out-the-world teenager with her character. I enjoyed that a lot. But it was obvious that this 19 year old girl was written by a man and I had a lot of trouble getting it out of my head.

And then there is her relationship with Vonvalt. The actual main character.

I think the author achieved the mystery that he wanted with the choice of narration but that also alienates us from Vonvalt. Because we are always going to get Helena’s insight into him and her relationship with him is an extra layer of complication that we have to get through and he quickly becomes this brooding detached boss. It starts out as a father figure mentor relationship and quickly transforms into “oh, I might have complex(romantic) feelings for this person”. And I am worried that they might have a sexual relationship in the future and I really don’t want to read that.

Vonvalt is a 40 something authority figure who took this 17 year old girl under his wing and has taught her almost everything she knows. You could argue that a 17 year old girl is very much likely to get a crush in similar situation but it is not written as something that she is trying to grow out of. She is pretty much leaning in so at a certain point it became very uncomfortable to read. It honestly sounds worse as I am putting it into words.

(For anyone interested, this was a very very small part of the book. I just had a hard time looking past it.)

There is a chance that I am wrong and the sexual overtones of their relationship don’t materialize outside her thoughts. So I will give the second book a chance because there was a lot to appreciate.

The book provides a unique perspective in a fantasy world as we get to follow a Lawyer/Judge/Jury type of character. It’s main focus is on morality and philosophy surrounding law and we get to see how different people uphold that. The book also had elements of religious fanaticism which is one of the topics that I can talk about anytime anywhere. The writing style also had this medieval quality to it that helped me immerse in the world. And I am really interested in the magic system and curious about what happens next. I just hope that the issues that I had with this get resolved in the next installment.