I feel like the authors do a marvelous job at bringing the world to life. They dont dump information on you to the point that you feel overwhelmed. They do a great job at distributing the explainations throughout the book, which comes across feeling more natural as we learn about the world alongside our FMC, Fia.

However, I wasn’t a big fan of the way the characters drew Out providing information. Our FMC states time and time again that she will be willing to listen and possibly help their cause if they only explain what is going on to her, yet the other characters constantly disregard and ignore this, then get upset when she doesn’t want to help. They would then thrust her into a situation she was unprepared for and overwhelm her, trying to force her hand and get mad when she didn’t do what they want. It felt a bit... off to me how this was handled.

I loved the trial situation and the way that they had magic and non-magical tests for the contestents. Fia had odds stacked against her and she still managed to overcome them but not in a super-overpowered way.

Overall it was really decent of a book and I look forward to being able to read book three!