I was really surprised at how much I enjoyed this book. I picked it up on a whim because the title sounded up my street and it was on special offer, but I'm SO glad I did!

It's very Throne Of Glass-esque except MUCH better. The characters are all layered with secret motivations and hidden personality traits - it makes for very captivating reading. I absolutely flew through this book; just over 400 pages in 2-3 days is very good going for me, and this is because it's such an EASY read and very compelling.

I tend not to dish out 5 star ratings easily - I like to reserve them for books that are truly incredible in my opinion - but this book is definitely worthy of the 4 stars I've given it, and I would recommend it to anyone who likes fantasy/historical fiction (it doesn't pretend to be historically accurate, but hey it's a fun era to play around with so what the hell).

The only thing that irritated me about this book was the distinct lack of female characters. There were three in total, and one was very minor. I mean, c'mon, for most of the characters their gender was irrelevant to the plot, so why not make more of them female? Just a thought.