This was easily one of my least enjoyable reading experiences of the year. I did not hate the book, in fact I read this as part of a book club / buddy read and I think I was the most positive voice inside that group but I really had a hard time connecting to almost anything within this book.

The whole setting and plot feel very stereotypical and bland. There are not really any memorable characters aside from the protagonist who makes for a mildly compelling character which gets explored through her relationships, strong will and ability to ask the right questions (sometimes). She is the glue that holds everything together, does a good job at it and is probably the best part of the book.

The whole thing is supposed to be very dark and bleak and in parts it succeeded at that but in others it just comes around as very comical. It also ends up being probably unintentionally funny at times. 

I’d like to draw a comparison the another book I read this year which also leaned pretty hard into the “Torture / Mysery Porn” and that was Kingdoms of Death. And well, where Ruocchio succeeds in making you really damn uncomfortable all the time, leading up to points where you just have to stop reading because you are so overwhelmed and shocked Hayes almost completely fails in that department. The stuff our protagonist has to go through is shocking to begin with but it quickly loses its impact and just gets jumbled together in this dull mush. 

I get that this book is only supposed to be a small part to this really big saga consisting of three trilogies and if you have a little more context to the world and the whole history of it might make it a lot better but I feel like as a standalone novel it just mostly fails. 

It is a pretty short book but also on the other hand it felt too long for the story it was telling. I get that you are telling the backstory of this probably very crucial character for the whole saga but man it was just pretty boring at times and felt like it could have been wrapped up way more quickly and still having the same impact. 

The ending was pretty cool but I don’t think that will be enough for me to go forward with this series. I heard good things about Rob J. Hayes as an author and this is my first book of his but I’ll probably have to look at some of his other series to make a judgement call.