the best part of this book was definitely the characters and their dynamics.  i loved the relationship dynamic, the love was so gentle and so beautiful. plot was there but mainly as a vehicle for character development, tho i did appreciate the little plot twist and fast paced (and tense) ending. kept me on my toes and engaged in the story beyond the relationship. 

“Stolen me? As well to say a caged bird can be stolen by the sky.”

If I could swallow this book whole, I absolutely would! This was an absolute gem of a story that captivated me from beginning to end. The world-building was rich and intricate, the characters beautifully vibrant, and the story itself incredibly moving and exciting. 

Meadows clearly put a huge amount of thought into the construction of this world, and succeeded in painting it very naturally, so that it felt very real and lived-in without our being subjected to endless exposition. The politics were so interesting and the mystery always kept me on my toes until the very end! But it was the burgeoning connection between Velasin and Caethari that really grabbed my heart and wouldn’t let go - their romance was characterised by such heartbreaking kindness that I genuinely wanted to scream into the void. 

This is a perfect read for anyone who loves high fantasy with great world-building and searing romance! This will always be a reread for me and has shot up to be one of my all-time favourites!

Get your act together and pick this book the hell up. Plot is an absolute mastery, political schemes scheming and pace pacing, characters complex lovable and interesting, romance burning slow burning bright burning just right. 

Arranged marriage!! between two men!!!! in a world of incredible diversity that's so well done. Queer trans nonbinary disability rep all there and slaying hard. I enjoyed myself so much that I'm lost for what to do next with my life other than recommend this book to everyone I know. 

Read it and thank me later.

A beautiful queer fantasy all about healing with a healthy dollop of plot too. Very like Winter’s Orbit and Ocean’s Echo in terms of the plot taking the forefront over the romance sometimes BUT it was still very good. I love all the main characters so much. Check the trigger warnings!!!!!

I really enjoyed a lot of this book, but there were too many mistakes and overall bad writing choices to rate it highly. I enjoyed the characters and diversity the most. Having a character communicate in sign language, multiple nonbinary people, and other queer people and POC characters was great to read. I think all the characters felt like real people with realistic dialogue. I enjoyed the lyrical prose and the food descriptions. I think the romance was well written but also left a bit to desire. 
For parts that I didn't enjoy, the main stumbling block was the plot. I haven't read such a terribly written murder mystery in a while, but this one took the cake for most predictable and horribly written mystery.  The pace has a lot to do with this, the book takes place over a week when we get to the new country our main character is traveling to. Because of this, about 50 things happen every single day and I kept getting whiplash when the writing would say something like, "All this on day 1." Because of the plot whipping by, you don't get any character development, no subtle hinting at angst in the romance, no real story building of the plot, not even a second to breathe in the new world you're in, despite the page length being at 544 pages. This resulted in a horrible mystery that I predicted from the beginning and our two main characters fumbling the entire time trying to react to one plot event before being thrust into another life changing event. 
Another issue I have is the decision to write an explicit rape scene and continue to graphically reference it. I think especially since this is fantasy and the book seems to be trying to be light-hearted, it's a confusing choice. If this was trying to be a dark fantasy I might understand it better, but it seems to straddle the two at the same time in a seemingly useless way. I also have conflicted feelings about if we need explicit and graphic SA scenes in any media. There is proven research that shows depicting SA can lead to more violence, regardless of the original media being against it. This also just feels like it unnecessarily causes harm to the readers who might have a history or know someone who has been an SA survivor. I'm not saying that we shouldn't have SA survivors as characters, or never discuss it, but I think this could've been written in a less explicit way that caused less harm and still had the same effect. The book also eventually treated the main character's trauma as almost non-existent when it was so extremely recent to the end of the story. 
Overall, I think I will read the sequel since I enjoyed enough of the book to breeze through it and enjoy the characters.

Overall: I don't regret reading this book and I'll probably recommend it to people who are comfortable with the content warning topics. I wish the execution was better on an otherwise fun sorta-court romance/drama plot 

However: The pacing made it difficult to enjoy either the romance or the mystery. All the characters are enjoyable, so I was happy to read them making friends and falling in love. But the 'falling in love' itself felt forced. Not that chemistry wasn't there, but that the bulk of the romance came from the fact the leads are in a queer romance, and therefore must be in love by the end of the book. It would have been nice to see their romance pushed off until the sequels. The mystery wasn't a real mystery as much as a series of things that happened over the course of a week that are solved when the main characters eventually- literally- accidentally stumble into the villain doing a full monologue. The reader doesn't have a chance to try and solve the mystery themself because we don't know anything about the world until specific details are told to us the moment they become relevant. The villain wasn't exactly a surprise, because it follows pretty standard story conventions, but the reveal wasn't satisfying enough to make the lead-up enjoyable. The villain essentially stares at the camera and explains every plot detail, with the heros occasionally popping in to remind us they're in the room. Even though I really liked each character, there's no actual character development for anyone. Everyone ends exactly where they started, with the exception of one of the main characters, who technically learns to be more open with his affections, but who also doesn't really have a problem with public affection except in occasional offhand remarks about how it would be scandalous in his home-country. I don't want to read about a main character who's homophobic or ableist or classist or sexist or any other version of bigot. But since we're told about how terrible his home-country is, and how every other person from that country is some degree of bigot almost without exception, AND the main character frequently apologizes on behalf of the culture he was raised in, it makes it really weird that he doesn't actually NEED to do any growing. Even the times he does 'mess up', which I'd argue are usually situations in which he thinks he's messed up because of miscommunication and really hasn't, he immediately realizes his mistakes, often as he's making them, and immediately apologizes and corrects himself. This is a book where all the characters assume he's a bigot and a third of his interactions are him explaining about how He's Actually An Ally. 

All that being said: The action scenes were fun. I wish the action wasn't left to the last handful of pages, because it was thrilling. All of the characters, even the villains, were very fun to read, and likable. I really liked the focus on friendships, especially pre-existing friendships, ESPECIALLY subverting the Hot Jealous Ex trope. The casual inclusion and diversity of marginalized identities in the book was refreshing. No one felt like a stereotype or a token character. The dialogue always felt authentic, and character choices and motivations always felt realistic and understandable. The magic system and different cultures around it was also fun, though woefully underutilized. The mixed use of first and third person was fun and helped differentiate between the POV characters. The writing, itself, was beautiful. The plot twist at the VERY end-

That the villain's plan was totally unnecessary and her plan was always going to cause her own downfall

- was fun! I think it's because it was set up earlier in the story in a way none of the mystery parts were.