I'm really sad about how flat this anticipated read fell for me. To start with the positives, I loved Smart's writing style, the characters, when they came into their own, were great too, particularly Kirdan. The book's real strength for me was its unique and atmospheric setting - I've never read anything quite like it. The world is brimming with potential for a great story.

However, there were just a few things about this I found jarring. Whilst the world was excellent, the magic system didn't feel fully fleshed out, and I only had vague ideas about what some of the terminology meant by the end. The functionality of the magic also felt a little blurry, so I didn't feel like I understood the scope of what magic entailed in this - I sense that here might have been a bit of anxiety over telling rather than showing, but honestly I think this could have worked really well with some super overwrought High Fantasy-style lore. I also felt like a lot of the action was going on off-stage - the complete gloss over the hunger games style tournament was really odd to me- I understood its function in the plot but not what it entailed.

I did find this picked up a lot in the last 150 pages, so perhaps I will pick up the sequel when it appears.