Okay so I started reading this because the blurb mentioned demons, there are demons in this book, but not really. So to be honest when I first started reading it I was a tad bit disappointed, especially since on top of there being very little mention of demons it was also really slow to start. However, Once it does pick up it goes a hundred miles an hour and it becomes a solid fantasy novel!
Bissey and Eaton are outlaws; for believing in the Dead God they and their people are hunted by the Little Tyrant King Davon for their religion. When Eaton's Uncle and the leader of their group is arrested Eaton decides he must rescue him no matter what. Even if he must put his own life at risk. Bissey knows she can't stop him but she also knows she can't allow him to do it alone, so she faces down the remaining council members and finally gets one to agree to go after Eaton.
Marla is an assassin's apprentice she has been training her whole life to become the King's Dagger one of the most powerful people in all of Hollowick. And when she is offered the opportunity to bring in "E" a member of the rebel party Marla jumps on the opportunity. If she can complete this mission she'll be one step closer to her goals.
Davon just wants to keep his people safe. Safe from the felgrim, the most powerful of demons, that stalk them and the thinmaru those rebels who worship the Dead God. And if the blood of the rebels is the price he must pay to keep his people safe then so be it. Besides a sacrifice to the Five Gods should keep the demon from killing for a while and he'll have to worry about one less rebel. But when he discovers that someone, someone in his own castle is summoning the felgrim everything Davon thought he knew will be turned on its head.
And when these four lives collide all hell will break loose.
Biggest complaint: I play Pokemon Bissey reads a lot like Blissey so now Bissey forever looks like a Pokemon in my head. Authors take note: Do a fandom search BEFORE naming your characters! Okay, I'm kidding you don't have to, because to be fair Bissey reminds me a lot of Blissey. She is self-sacrificing to an almost painful level but incredibly intelligent, thoughtful, and caring so yeah she's basically Nurse Joy's right-hand Pokemon.
Moving on.
This was such a slow start I honestly considered stopping it probably a quarter of the way through but there was just something that made me think it HAD to be building up to something good. You don't write five hundred pages for it to be a snooze fest for the entire five hundred pages and I was right because once the story gains momentum it goes from zero to sixty in like half a chapter. Except it was a predictable zero to sixty. I called the entire turn of events at about the time we discover someone was summoning the demon. Honestly, if the book hadn't had some stand-out characters this would have been three stars.
Marla and Davon are probably my favorite characters in this. Marla's this badass, clever assassin with a heart and Davon is just trying to do his best with a bunch of people around him that don't want him to succeed. He's annoying at times but if I think about the age his character is supposed to be and how I was at that age his decisions and frustrations are realistic and relatable. I'm not going to lie though I really don't like that this may turn out to be a love triangle. I'm not now nor will I ever be a fan of love triangles. Eaton is obnoxious. It's been a very long time since I disliked a character as much as I do Eaton and I will be eternally annoyed if his idiocy gets someone killed in later books.
The religious side of this is interesting as well, the battle between the Five Gods and the Dead God seems to be the center of this series but we find very little out about the two religions in the book and I enjoyed that for a couple of reasons. It gives me something to look forward to (especially with how this ended) and I have all sorts of theories (also because of how it ended). I'm not going to go into any of them because I feel it would give too much away but needless to say, I'm dying to read the next book to find out if my theories are accurate.
The ending though really made this, it was a perfect cliffhanger one where we end up with more questions than answers and a burning need to read the next book!
Overall this was a solid fantasy book even if much of it was predictable and I'm looking forward to reading book two!
And as always much thanks to BookSirens for the eArc of this book in exchange for the review!
No comments:
Post a Comment