I received an ARC for this book for a fair, honest review. There will be heavy spoilers in this.
This may seem like a negative review, but I specifically gave it three stars because it DID pull my interest so much I finished it in one sitting and it was fun(ish) to read.
This is a fast paced, dark fantasy book with angels, vampires, fae, assassins, magical academy, etc. I think this book COULD have been five stars for me given the plot, but it fell flat. Im going to be pinpointing just some of the things that were missing out of it and what bothered me the most.
My biggest problem with this book was the lack of proper world building. We get bits and pieces of information, but nothing is ever elaborated on.
For example the Moira Seminary, it’s an academy specifically for people trying to get into The Golden City. You have to pass a series of challenges and undergo extensive physical and magic training to get into the city. Our MFC is sent there on a mission by the assassin lord and it’s never told what the mission is. I’m assuming that will be brought up in book two. Anyways, nearly the entirety of the book is spent there and while it’s set in a classroom a handful of times, we basically learn nothing. A dash of information on vampires, mostly as a foreshadowing. We learn about Fae wings, but just the once and not in great detail. “The Bond” is brought up and the Headmistress claims no one is learning about it yet because they’re not ready. That’s all, that’s all that’s said until the main characters bond at the end of the book and the MFC says “This is how the bond worked.” Also very little is told about the differences in magic, it’s just kind of put out there and then everyone starts using it. Except our MFC who tries it once and says “smoke filled my senses, darkness filled my veins, I panicked. My eyes snapped open”. That is also not elaborated on throughout the book. She can conjure fire, just once, until the end when she suddenly can. There’s nothing about any major trials to compete in, besides the very first one and then some knife throwing. The physical training is shown a couple of times, but not enough. They’re all told that there is no killing outside of the classroom, our MFC does end up doing this out of self defense and has the MMC hide the body. The Headmistress eventually finds the body, MFC is freaking out about being caught, andddd nothing else. That’s it.
We essentially know nothing of what the MFC looks like besides her “darkly curly hair”, then learn at the end she has blue eyes. Again, the world building lacked that we didn’t even know this. The friendships felt forced and the most that is learned about her friends is Lanson and at the end, more about Wolf. For a person who is mistrustful of everyone and is solely focused on her mission for Lord, it’s contradicted in her near immediate trust in all her friends, especially Lanson. It really lacked consistency in her personality. I found myself detached from the story in this department as all the relationships felt forced. I just needed more, more from all of it.
Overall, this felt like a rushed version of The Serpent and The Wings of Night. The plot twist could’ve been guessed from the very beginning. It was fast paced, but felt rushed and focused too much on the pace that we miss out on so much of the story. I’d like to read the next book, but not entirely sure after this one.
One last thing, please let there be a different phrase for the next book. Reading “Hells” nearly every page, sometimes multiple times in one paragraph, was irritating