It took a lot of effort for me to slog through this book, for many reasons. I wanted to love this book but just couldn’t get swept away in it. To me, the most interesting aspect was the dynamic between Fen and Sayer, and the system of gangs (like the one Fen is a part of). The worldbuilding felt very generic and read like a bad copy of Arcane, and the book is constantly throwing all this jargon at you without grounding itself into the story.
Speaking of which, the story also felt very cookie cutter and surface level. The politics within this particular world had so much potential to be interesting but just didn’t hit the mark; I think there just wasn’t enough basis for any of the political dynamics.

The plot of the book felt haphazardly pieced together, so many portions of the story are just the girls fighting and then running away, only to get caught, then escape and run away again. I love a good fight scene more than anything, but this got so repetitive and did nothing to really further any sort of plot.

I grew to really love Sayer and Fen, as I said. I feel like they had the most depth of any of the characters, and that’s where I find another fault with this book. The rest of the cast felt very bland and we never stayed with one character long enough to really get attached to any of them.

The ending truly left a lot to be desired, being completely open-ended. While there’s nothing wrong with leaving your conclusion open-ended, it still needs to be done in a certain way to be effective. I just feel like there was so much fluff to this book and barely any depth.

I also think there’s a right and wrong way to write feminism into a book; A, write a feminist book, or B, write a book that has complex, multidimensional female characters. This book went by option A.

These are all merely my own opinions, of course; I’m only trying to be constructive towards this book. I felt it had so much potential to be thrilling and full of life.