A good speech can elevate a book, but when every dramatic line that can be created is shoved into the pages, the message becomes watered down. This results in characters feeling flat and whiny, and plot points appearing contrived. I liked certain aspects of this book a lot. The world building and magic systems were interesting, and every character had some degree of complexity, which I did appreciate. There was a lot of potential, but the “tell don’t show” writing style made me put this book down on multiple occasions.