DNF at 59%

There are very very few books that I have actually had to DNF. And this is the first one in several months that’s gonna be a DNF.

Let’s start with the few things I did like

1. I love the premise of a gladiator style fighting arena. There was so much potential for this part of the story to shine. Especially when you read the description, you would think the story would center around the arena fights.
2. I appreciate how much time was spent describing the healing scenes and how much energy and effort was put into Maeve’s character and role as a healer. I can tell that the author spent time to flesh this out and I appreciate that.

And now let’s go to what I didn’t like
1. World building, who is she?? The first part of the book is just a lore dump with no explanation. You’re introduced to several important MC’s and you have to figure out who’s who and where they fit into the story. Not to mention that as the book progresses you learn about different families and cities and there is hardly any, if at all, details given about them. Why bring them up and write them at all?
2. The writing is cringe. Between the excessive use of ‘…’ at the end of a MC’s internal dialogue, and using ‘modern’ day language such as ‘that tracks.’ it was hard to me to actually get lost into the novel. Not to mention the excessive amounts of cursing for almost no point?
3. This was marketed as fantasy with a romance side plot, and it actually is romance with just enough fantasy and the thinnest amount of plot to be marketed as fantasy. Again, I don’t mind a good romantasy, but there needs to be a balance between the two. The romance was supposed to be slow burn romance, but is insta love instead.
4. The amount of sex scenes is way too much, too fast. There was so much potential to actually develop a fish between Maeve and Leith, especially with the book being over 500 pages, instead we get insta love to banging almost immediately. And the sex scenes themselves were also cringe to read, which adds on to how elementary the writing actually was. In one, the two characters are getting busy on a table, and a sentence reads ‘Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang.’ I’m not even joking.
5. The book advertises itself as Gladiator meets D&D and what a load of shit that is. Just because you have magic and arena fights in the same book does not mean that’s an accurate description.
6. The pacing of the book is all over the place. We have huge time skips of days/weeks without anything happening, but the first two arena fights take place within a few days of each other. That doesn’t make sense, especially because it is harped on that Vitor is actively trying to kill Leith in these arena fights. The time skips serve as plot armor to make it believable that Leith has healed enough from prior fights to survive the next one.

It’s not surprise that this book was delayed several times, and in my opinion it should have been delayed even more. There’s way too many problems to overlook and continue reading, which is a disappointment because I feel like there’s a lot of potential and it could be a good book.