3 stars! I love a standalone fantasy, but only when it is done well. Georgia Summers’ prose is very lovely and delicate, capturing the dreamlike magic of her story, but the pacing of the story is very off, world-building scattered and truncated, and characters and their motivations left underdeveloped and thus lacklustre. I still enjoyed the world, but was left craving more by the magic system that allows you to hop through worlds using keys and doors made of a divine metal.

The relationship between Violet and Aleksander, whilst had potential, mostly just frustrated me as they would be pining over each other one page, and betraying each other the next.

The main villain, Penelope, is supposedly motivated by a millennia-old debt she is owed, yet the actual explanation is somewhat diluted by the fact that her actions are spontaneous and baseless 95% of the time.

The entire foundation of the story is based upon Violet’s search for her mother, yet in the end this is completely forgotten, resolved in a single, throw-away paragraph that provides almost no consolation.

It isn’t all negative. Again, Summers’ prose is ethereal, reflecting the enchanting magic and childlike wonder emphasised throughout her story. The characters that are developed are loveable and I was left rooting for them, wondering how the story would resolve. I just think she needed more pages to expand the world and the characters, this story would have been better as a duology.