Despite the female main character, all of the women are written in a way that feels typical of male centered fantasy (boobing boobily up the stairs, hyper focus on appearance and attraction/lack there of, insertion of sexuality in places where it doesn’t always move the plot forward). This was definitely grim dark and while I generally liked the world it was set in, the actual plot felt very boring to me. It was a lot of, target a person from the revenge list, do the revenge, something goes wrong and it’s bloody and violent and we barely escape, rinse and repeat. That’s fine, but not particularly engaging to me.

Fantastic debut with a rich, lived in exploration of the AU it sets up. I loved the interplay between instances, the discussion of culture and immigration and identity, and the individual characters, but felt the main plot/intrigue was a little slow and not as developed as it could have been.

Excellent narration that really handled some of the more confusing parts well.

Thank you to Macmillan Audio for the gifted copy.

This was fine. I found the fantasy plot mostly predictable, with a lot of the characters following similar archetypes as in other fantasy books. I wouldn’t say any part of it particularly stood out, and a number of the POVs were hard to differentiate from one another because they were so similar.

Having said that, the prose was straightforward and readable, and if you enjoy this type of fantasy book (vaguely medieval with some magic & swords, mostly male characters, hero’s journey type) this is a good entry into the general market. Palatable and inoffensive.