Thank you to Netgalley for a free eARC without expectation of review. All opinions are my own.

I feel like with this book I was either missing far too much or a lot just wasn't being explained. Basic things like how the currency in the world worked, who the characters actually were, what nava even was exactly... Even the timeline itself was pretty confusing and didn't seem to make too much sense - at one point I think there was a typo of one year instead of saying 10 years? Or the 10 years was a typo? Or... I just couldn't tell you with confidence the timeline of kinda anything that happened. The very last chapter also made no sense considering the information we got through the book, nothing added up there unless it was completely different characters.

The characters were ok, but mostly forgettable. None of them really felt like they could stand on their own 2 legs, all of them felt quite flat leaving you knowing very little about who they are as a person. Or in a lot of cases, absolutely 0 idea. Character traits were kinda only what purpose they had to the plot, and that's it - you only knew something about a character if it was relevant. Aspis I think was the most interesting character to me, but pretty much all I got to know about her is she's a hunter, she's proud of hunting, and ties her self-worth to people enjoying the feasts - and likes the occasional sparring. And that's kinda the depth for all the characters, even the main ones.

Plot was all over the place. Some points slowed down massively, other points sped through events. Things happen, we get told things happen, and move on. A lot of time is spent with advisors and people telling the main characters stuff, or the 2 mains telling each other things. Even when outside in the middle of big action moments, still mostly boils down to Shadow/Scarlet being told what happens in most scenes. Even just how shadow is kept in the palace, how she was gotten, what she's allowed to do, etc just kinda makes absolutely no sense by the end. Details kept conflicting, like with the final scene - how I interpreted that means it's gone against multiple facts the book laid out earlier in the book, but I can't see another way to interpret the ending.

Surprisingly this book also got really dark at times, but it seemed like it did without an actual point. There's a long scene in the middle of the book detailing some very horrific animal abuse. Why? No idea why, it's just there to shock I guess. There's no point to it, the MC was already suspicious of the palace, and nothing changes afterwards - it's not even mentioned again. People with ability also just seem to like torturing people with their powers, and that's fine. I guess. Kinda no consequence for that.

Idk, this had a decent underlying idea, but the execution was just really bad. I should have taken it as a red flag that when I was like 3 chapters in I clocked that there was essentially no world building happening 😅