Finished. This was....fine? To say this was nigh on 700 pages with essentially 3 main characters, a lot more could've been done. With the story that was told, 200 pages could've easily been cut from the total page count and absolutely nothing lost from the story which isn't great and shows that it could've been tightened up/edited better. I wish we had more worldbuilding and tbh character building too. I don't really know much about Raeve, Kaan or Veya after this book finishes. I wish the dragons had factored in a bit more. I wish we'd gotten more answers about characters that they casually dropped in (looking at you Scavenger King - though I acknowledge this is to be built on in the second book - and The Other). It just felt like a lot of it was underdeveloped. I wish we'd gotten to see more of Raeve being an assassin and actually fighting more because this felt like a somewhat wasted element of her character. I do think the idea of Raeve losing her memories and having multiple entities inside her(?) to be intriguing and that mental battle was probably one of my favourite parts. Looking back on the book as a whole though, it felt like barely anything happened plot-wise and it was more about personal relationships. idk I think there was potential here but atm it's not enough for me to stick round for a second book unless something major happens. 2.5 ⭐
