It was fine. Some unsurprising story developments - the characters are standard archetypes. The setting was one that I appreciated as well as a magic system. Parts of it dragged a bit but I would say I equally liked it and was bored by it. It wasn’t hard to finish and I didn’t hate any part of it. 

Summary of things for my own reference:

The young characters I feel have a lot of ego which is mostly what drives them to do what they do. Imani, the main character is 16 and is pretty confident she knows exactly how the world works. So does Taha, the villain and love interest, who I would guess is maybe like 18? They go on this epic adventure together and there’s a whole “will they, won’t they” vibe the whole time but in the end he’s a dummy who just takes orders, and his ego - plus parental trauma - is what drives his whole personality. 

They cross a desert, escape a magical abandoned city, escape a magical enchanted sand storm, escape a non-magical prison, deal with white colonizers and then go sailing. A lot of adventures but like pretty tortured emotions the whooole time. Oh and also witnessing enslavement and genocide of their people by colonizers. Of course they also have a distrust of any “outsiders” too so like, everyone is just generally problematic is the message I guess.