This book had a lot of promise and started out really good, hooking you within the first few pages. But unfortunately, the story lost it’s flare about half way through. The magic system is very interesting, with true magic being an illness and common magic coming from cards, but all of it having a consequence. We have some nice card illustrations at the beginning of each chapter, that repeatedly explain the cards uses to us. They give some nice insight and help learn the magic system, yet it takes forever for you to truly remember what each cards does and it’s consequences. The constant reminder is necessary, but at the same time, it is annoying that the story doesn’t familiarize you enough with the cards magic, that you don’t need these reminders.
The book has some good rhymes, that add to the vibe of the story and I especially like how they play into the Nightmares personality. I generally like how he is portrayed throughout with the sounds of his claws and teeth and his mysterious wisdom, but I found the Nightmare to be the only character with enough of a personality to enjoy. The other characters are either forgettable or annoy me. Especially the main character is an absolute cry baby, that basically cries in almost every scene, which is more than frustrating. The Nightmare and the main character had a great dynamic in the beginning of the book, almost father and daughter like and I found it absolutely charming, but this unfortunately changes to something more distrustful and hateful and I absolutely hated it.
The romantic tension had been good in the beginning too and the two love interests had been cute together, but the constant negative commentary by the other characters almost ruin it, as you also start feeling like the two lovers are overdoing it and it gets annoying. What I also found quite frustrating was, that while they were affectionate, there was hardly any descriptions of their feelings towards each other, it didn’t feel as much “in love” more physically, even though you knew this wasn’t the intent.
Most frustrating was the keeping secrets and the miscommunication because of it. The characters seemed to dig themselves into deeper graves each scene, coming out hurtful, when secrets are spilled and expecting honesty, when they themselves weren’t being honest at all. The story does drag a bit at times, but there were several good battles scenes, where the author also wasn’t afraid to injury characters.Though admittedly I felt like the author forgot about injuries, when they didn’t belong to the main character, having for example one side character with a broken ankle better just the next day.There were several twists, but there was so much hinting within the writing, it was predictable again. And every single action scenes was a close call, it certainly help to raise the levels of tension, but I began getting annoyed, that there couldn’t be a action scene without it being another close call.
I actually quite liked the ending of the book and overall it wasn’t terrible. The things, that I disliked only appeared in the second half of the book and I’d say the good and bad almost equaled each other out. Though I will not be reading the second volume.