For a book about the Cold War never ending and the political pressures that brings on the world, I shouldn't have been so amused and entertained while reading.

There is so much stuff in this book, and none of it goes together. The three parts (school, heist, second heist) are absolutely not coherent and there's nothing tying them together except the same four characters and vague Cold War. Everyone we meet becomes forgotten until the plot requires them, details are given in fact files that don't mean a lot to the plot, and the relationships between everyone are very strange.

What is the plot? Winterveil is a dystopian dark academia, but due to characters' motives, speech and general behaviour lot of the time I was in pure disbelief that anyone could possibly think anything is real, and trust a group of 17 year olds to carry out not one, but two military operations perfectly. Only one of them acts like they could! It's still so unclear how Valeran works, who allows it and why the students are actually there. The whole Dreamscape is explained by magic basically, and I don't understand why anyone is doing anything!

There's a lot of vaguely uncomfortable themes in here that have no explanation (and not because it's a YA novel- they simply have no explanation). A character becomes aroused from seeing another character almost sexually assaulted. Someone feels 'defiled and dirty' after engaging in a consensual act (and it's specifically M/M which rubs me the wrong way). An adult kisses a teenager unprompted and is attracted to them (the teen is not).

Julian exists to pine after Klaudia. He has very little else to do so it's ironic that he has the most development (between his family trauma and strange relationship with Crispen). Nadiya is nothing but secretive with distaste for being lied to. Giselle comes a long way, only to completely regress in the final parts. Only Klaudia is consistent and changes in a reasonable which I enjoyed. I preferred her and Julian separately, but Nadiya and Giselle together much more.

This had the potential to be so good, but I simply couldn't find the actual meaning (if there was any) buried under lots of fluffy information, so sadly this was entertaining and much else. I'll be reading the sequel if only to see how this can be concluded, but it's not one i'd recommend if you wanted a thought provoking dystopian. Maybe a YA heist.

ARC provided by Harper Collins and NetGalley