This was a wild ride. I was swept up in this new world almost immediately with a great build up in complexity. Most of the characters intrigued me almost from the start and I kept wanting to see more of them. 

This book is filled with political intrigue and it is done in such a way that I absolutely love. It was filled with twists and turns, fed by incredible world building and amazing characters. 

While this book is tagged as romance, I do want to warn that there is basically no romance in this book. I suspect there will be more later on, but do not read this if you are expecting romantasy. 

I have only one critique, and that is that the book was extremely slow paced at times. I am a slow reader myself and when the book is also slow paced, then it truly just snails along. While the story would be more than able to keep me reading without breaks, the slow pace forced me to, since it was simply taking so long.

I read before that the story contains many twists, so I was on my guard to catch them. Yet many I didn’t notice or noticed very late, and the big one at the end took me completely by surprise. It is quite the feat that I didn’t even consider it even though I went through quite a few scenarios in my head. But then again, I am not the best at predicting twists so maybe I am just easily fooled. There also so many things left open at the end of the book, things I tried to keep track of, so I am really hoping to see where those things will lead later on.

I am so excited to see more of the characters in later books. Nathon and Hestan were definitely favourites, but I would have loved to see so much more from Loria. I hope she will get to have a bigger role in the future because I am so intrigued by her and I know she can be more than this book let her do. I do have to say though, many of the characters read younger than they are. You know how in YA fantasy you feel weird that they are around 18 while they read like well into their 20s? Well, these characters are supposed to be in their mid and late 20s yet I would have guessed them to be in their early 20s max. 

Reading arcs of book in a series is always a pain, because when I love it, I will need to wait extra long to continue, which is the case here. I just want to stay in this world, so the wait for the next book will be a particularly long one.

Thank you to the author for the e-arc in exchange for an honest review!