This review was tough for me. I love Jenny Fox's work. I loved His Blue Moon Princess (even pre-ordered a copy) and both Lady Damphir and The War God's Favorite are on the way to being an easy 5 stars for me. This one... it's 3 stars.
Overall, I liked Nate in HBMP. I don't know what happened in this book but getting to see his thoughts really changed my view if him. I just don't like him anymore. I am almost afraid to read His Blazing Witch because next to Damien, Liam is my next favourite male character and I am afraid it would be ruined for me. All I saw in him was a selfish man who was resentful of anyone who inconvenienced him... even his brother who had sacrificed so much for him. I thought he had a sweet brotherly type relationship with Nora in the first book. In this one, I felt he appeared cold. It ruined him for me.
Elena was just not as likeable to me as Nora. I don't think she handles problems well and for somebody so strong she runs away a lot. I felt like there was such a desire to make her powerful which took away from her character for me. I liked how Nora used her wits and grew in strength. I liked Nora's leadership more and did not feel the way the Luna leadership plays out here was acceptable... clearly from this review I am team Nora and Damien, with Boyan and Daniel and Liam and Sylviana in close second.
This is just a personal preference but the little pet names at the end of this book that are supposed to be affectionate were overused for me... made me skip forward a bit when it got started.
I loved hearing about how the war played out. There was so many elements in this book I enjoyed. There was just pieces I thought could have been edited out, adjusted etc. There are some sentence structuring that needs reworking and she really needs a better editor who will pick up on the difference between enthusiast, enthusiastic and enthusiastically in her work but, to be fair, if I was trying to write in French I would likely have issues with verb conjugation. I have tried writing in another language... it's not easy.
She really is one of my favourite authors. Jenny Fox is an excellent storyteller.