"The stars would come and go. Fire was eternal."

Everything I hoped it would be.

This was absolutely my kind of book. A religion based magic system, unearthing corrupt history, royalty x guard romance, complex family dynamics, and the realities of how far one must go to keep what they love safe.

I loved so much about this book, but (surprisingly) my favorite part was following Leo - Ravani's king and Elena's father - as he grapples with his own humanity and the decisions he feels he has to make to be a good leader. The way his relationship with faith and life was handled was really interesting to me and it made me look forward to chapters that, written by another author, might have bored me.

The relationship was fantastic, if a bit more rushed than I'd like in a slow-burn fantasy series. (Take this with a grain of salt, they don't even hold hands until at least 400 pages in.) I loved the characters on their own and I appreciated that neither of them lost their own struggles to fawning over each other.

Also, this book is brutal and no one was safe (which I prefer!)

It was a bit predictable, but in the way that makes you feel satisfied as everything unfolds.

My main complaint would be that - despite being a rather slow-paced, 500+ page book - certain aspects were rather rushed. I can't give any examples without heading into spoiler territory, but what I will say is that I just wished things would have been given more time instead of just quickly being moved past.

Overall, though, this is exactly what I was hoping it would be and I cannot wait for the next book. If we usually have similar tastes in books, I definitely recommend this one.