I received a free copy of this book for review as an ARC from the authors.
THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS.
When I got this book and read through the first chapter or so, my expectation was that this would be a vampire romantasy Handmaid’s Tale sort of story. And on its surface, it sort of is. But that quickly falls away and leaves behind a scared woman in the company of vampires that she’s forced to trust because the others at court would sooner see her dead. Despite it all, her immediate captor, Corven, is kind and indulgent, giving her all he can to make her stay in the castle as comfortable as possible, making her question whether she can trust him or not.
I liked the way the line of succession works, with the transition from human to vampire. It's a unique take, and that's always nice to see something new in a vampire book. Generally, I liked the approach to how vampires and dhampirs work, how they change from human to vampire, and so on. It's horrifying and slow, and I love the implications for how it functions in maintaining the hierarchical structure of this world.
This book is slow, and I cannot emphasize this enough. Saelora and Leish are supposed to be the endgame relationship, but by the end of this first book, I can honestly say that I’m not rooting for them to wind up together. Saelora and Corven make more sense together, and I feel that, in saying this, I’ve found myself on the wrong side of the Edward vs. Jacob arguments of the 2000s. It felt like it took too long for the enemies-to-lovers to enter the "I like you" stage. Actually, by the end, Saelora still doesn't exactly "like" Leish, and that's after 530 pages. I understand that this is the first of a four-book series, but this wasn't enough to get me invested in their relationship.
Corven is just such a sweet cinnamon roll of a character around Saelora that it's hard to root for the guy who's been a dick to her through most of the book. I genuinely like their relationship because he's willing to alter his behavior to accommodate her trauma, he wants her to learn things if she's interested, and he clearly adores her. I kept waiting for him to either die or be revealed to be a conniving bastard because it was the only way to justify Leish being the guy she wound up with.
I found her constant flip-flopping about her stance on Leish tiring, especially given her characterization of him as an unrepentant cold-blooded murderer, which she has little basis for. She knows that Corven has little say in the things he’s made to do by the queen, so why would she assume any differently for Leish? I recognize that she may have felt a need to cling to this monstrous image of him, so that she doesn’t develop feelings for him and feel as though she’s betraying her people. But as a reader, it was frustrating, especially when we get several glimpses of him showing kindness and compassion, even to other humans.
We don’t get very many chapters told from Leish’s perspective (I would guess about 1/5 are from his POV). This severely limits our insights into Leish’s inner thoughts, and it makes it harder to empathize with him because we seldom get to know who he is behind the mask. I’m also used to dual POV romance books having the two love interests narrate roughly equal portions of the story (not that this is a rule as such, just that it’s common practice), and so this book felt off-balance in that regard.
I will say, Leish's "oh fuck, I love her" moment contains one of the HARDEST lines I've ever read: "I burned to be what she craved, to give her the world and every forbidden want, to fill her until she was drowning in pleasure, dark, fiery, and all-consuming. I wanted her to destroy me, to carve her name into my bones." Like damn, that shit's good. I just wish it had happened 200 pages earlier.
Also, this is more of a formatting thing, but I firmly believe that trigger warnings and/or content warnings should be listed at the front of the book, not the back. You shouldn’t have to flip through the book and risk seeing triggering material just to get to the content warnings.
I really wanted to love this book. But unfortunately, it just wasn't for me, and I won't be continuing the series.