going into this i really wasn't sure i would like it, i saw it advertised as romantasy, and i really don't enjoy romance generally, also the length made me wonder if it would be very slow paced and boring, but i was wrong and i enjoyed it so much more than i thought i would. it did feel a bit slow to get into but once it got going i was sucked in and thinking about it constantly whenever i wasn't reading. i love bards, magic, scottish culture/history, and nature so i deeply enjoyed the world building. i also loved the multiple POVs, none of them ever felt boring, or worse than any of the other characters. however, the changes in the middle of the page with absolutely no indication of a change was difficult for me, it flowed well once i had realised i was reading a different character, but i would always have to re-read at least 2 paragraphs to understand what was going on. just some asterisk to split up the paragraphs where the POVs change would've been so much better. another negative for me is that it is so clearly heavily inspired by scotland, it felt weird that there wasn't more scots spoken between the characters, even just that they all said yes to each other, not aye - it just felt off and took me out of the environment a bit. overall it was a delightful end to the summer read along for me and i will be reading the sequel soon