Wow, reading this was a rollercoaster but you know what, I did like it overall.

There are some things that I don’t like about this book so let’s get those out of the way. First, the Dragon. He is a big selling-point for the book, yet he ends up being very uninteresting.

Taking 17 year old girls to your tower for 10 years is already super disturbing but the explanation for this did not satisfy me at all and did not make it any less strange. Then there is also the super weird thing with forcing Nieszka to wear those dresses and also being very hostile for no reason, why are you, as a 153 year old man, beefing with a 17 year old girl? While we are on the subject, why are you having ‘relations’ with a 17 year old girl in the middle of a battle?! This really pulled me out of the story unfortunately. I don’t like the dragon and the ‘romance’ did not do this story any good, it would have been fine (or better?) without it. I’m glad that is was not explored any further.

Also, some concepts were introduced but never explored further. For example,

Nieszka faints and she is then told not to do any magic for a week but it doesn’t affect the story much. Nieszka is assaulted by Marek but it is just never mentioned again, was that just done to mark Marek as a bad guy? Why could Nieszka not get a wizard name? The bestiary book felt a little disconnected too.

Overall, a lot of things were left to your own imagination.

The characters are not super deep but there were still some characters that I liked. I really liked Kasia, she was very comforting. I also liked the main character, yes she was a ‘special snowflake’ or a Mary Sue or whatever, but since none of the characters were really fleshed out it wasn’t super distracting. Also, I liked how she ended up being able to support herself, that she fought for what she wanted and that she was a little stubborn. 

I also liked the ‘journey’ aspect of the book. The first time they

entered the Wood I really started to enjoy the story. It reminded me of Tolkien’s Mirkwood. I liked the castle scenes a little less but the Wood scenes were enjoyable to read, especially the finale.

I also really liked the whimsical fairytale/folklore feel of the story, though we did not get a lot of world-building it still felt mystical. The magic system of flowing and dancing with the words and songs was also fun to me!

I ended up rating this a 3.75 out of 5. I feel like it did not reach it’s full potential and it had some flaws but I had fun reading this and that is what matters. The ending was satisfying enough (

in my interpretation Nieszka does not settle for Sarkan

) and it reads smoothly.