Ratings7
Average rating3.6
Has she been sent to save the realm or destroy it? As Spymaster to the Queen, Aya's blood oath ensures she protects those she fights alongside - including Will, the Queen's Enforcer and Aya's bitter rival. When rumors of dark magic rise in a nearby kingdom, both are sent to investigate. But when Aya's power acts beyond her gods-given affinity, she risks being turned into a weapon in a war she doesn't know how to win. And when her relationship with Will unexpectedly shifts, neither know the danger that will follow . . .
Reviews with the most likes.
This book was ok. I think it should be classified as YA or NA. Definitely not adult high fantasy. It was full of tropes I hate, and the love triangle was not good. There was nothing fresh or new, it's all been done before.
I did enjoy the narrator. I don't think I would have been able to finish a physical copy.
Thank you to Net Galley and the publisher for an audio arc.
Thanks to NetGalley for the Audiobook ARC!
2 stars. This one sadly wasn't the book for me, even though I had been looking forward to reading it. I was mostly bored. And struggled to make it to the end.
The writing isn't great. Very simplistic and clunky. It made the narration incredibly dull. And the word choices were very repetitive. There was so much clenching! Fists, jaws, teeth, stomachs. No body part was safe!
There was also a lot of info-dumping at the start, all very boring and messy. It didn't make the world feel rounded or interesting. The characters felt very flat, too. They were mostly moody and whiny and overall annoying to read about. Their internal thoughts and the dialogue between them started to be repetitive after only a few chapters. The seemingly interesting detail of the characters' bond with wolves was just that, a mostly unimportant detail.
The promised enemies to lovers part of this story was just them being snippy with each other, for no good reason. They had zero chemistry. And while this is an adult book, the characters' motivations felt very YA.
It was all just very flat and bland and didn't make much sense.
There also seem to be two different audiobook versions. The audio-ARC I listened to was narrated by Devon Sorvari and while it wasn't bad, it was slightly monotonous at times. After listening to a sample, I think I would have preferred the other one, narrated by Saffron Coomber, more.
A standard, enjoyable romantasy that reads way more YA than adult.
My biggest complaint is that I don't really understand where the devotion of the LI is coming from.