I was expecting to love this more than I did, but I still liked it a lot and I think it's a great YA fantasy. It's one of the best I've read in 2024, for sure.  

It has a lot of great things going for it. A strong, flawed, likable FMC whom I love and wish the best for, interesting side characters, good intrigue, cool magic systems and lore, engaging relationships, and good character development and growth. 

My favorite thing about this was the themes it explores (grief, trauma, identity, self-determination, etc.), the representation it provides, and the FMC's journey. I think those aspects are the strongest parts of the story and I love the way they were integrated with all of the cool fantasy elements. I also loved the writing style. 

My biggest and probably only issue with it is that it has one of my least favorite approaches to worldbuilding: info-dumping. It was info dump after info dump and they got very tiresome to read. It slowed the story down a lot and made it feel very dense, effectively sucking the fun out of it for several paragraphs or pages. Honestly, I would be fine with all the info-dumping if it actually made the world understandable, but it didn't. Not fully. There are a lot of things that are still confusing and unclear to me because of the way they were presented. It almost feels like I have to go back to the info-dumps, take notes, and study. I don't want to do that when I'm reading fantasy for fun, so I won't. 

Though the info-dumping was an issue for me, it's not a deal-breaker. I'm going to continue with the series. That ending was so good and unexpected! I'm not super invested in the love triangle aspect of this, but I'm intrigued about how it will be explored and handled in the next books.