Utterly Phenomenal!

This was an absolute revelation to read and the performance was superb!

Knowing that this was a debut novel left me open-mouthed and learning it is a series made me overjoyed.

Fantasy is a genre filled with cishet white guys who are largely oblivious to the amount of politics and colonialism they include in their works without thinking about it. It's the entire foundation of much of the genre and TTRPG offshoots like D&D. But this takes the existing tropes and analogues to history and includes them purposely to great effect, weaving a beautiful, heartbreaking, and exciting tale filled with realised complex and flawed characters and concepts and tensions so often ignorantly and clumsily included and/ or offensively handwaved that are handled deftly with care and understanding. The book isn't just politics either, I'm just saying it handles them well.

Genuinely one of the best books I've ever read. ( )

This one started out a bit slow but picked up pace quickly and kept me entertained and invested throughout. Loving the gender queer themes throughout, which are seamless in that they just exist and aren't exclaimed upon by every character in the novel. Aside from the pacing problem, I'd like to see more character depth, but the end of the book satisfied me in that dept and I look forward to seeing how the "relationship" between Luka and Touraine grows in the next installment.

Awesome world-building in a non-typical fantasy setting. Definitely give it a read! ( )

Pretty cool book, had some hiccups in the plot -- why does Touraine make the WRONG CHOICE EVERY TIME -- but has some potential for the rest of the series. Would I read other stuff by the author again? Sure. ( )

An impressive fantasy debut, ambitious and heavy but so important and raw. Unapologetically direct with its strong themes of colonialism, racism, inequality and prejudice. Impressively tackling serious and sensitive topics throughout, whilst maintaining the feeling of relatability, sympathy and longing.

Honestly this book was not perfect, I was not instantly gripped, nor did I quickly understand the world or characters. But once I did get into this book, once I got past the rocky introduction, past figuring out the ambiguous parts of the world and started to know and sink into the world and characters, this was a stunning book.
Important and heart wrenching, and I couldn’t see a single thing coming, every page was filled with twists and turns, old wounds and righteous anger.

Heart wrenching and incredibly impactful, this was painful, completely hopeless and unfair. Full of longing and hope for a better future, no matter how many times that hope is thrown back in your face, to stay resilient and proud.

“You will never have to sell yourself to live”

A rich, genuine world and culture but the world building, explanations and logic are left very much to the reader to work out or fill in with their own imagination.
So much pain, loss and betrayal, it’s hard to know who to love, who’s right or wrong and who to root for. This book had my emotions all over the place and my heart in my mouth more than once. Once I reached about 30% I could not put this book down.
Philosophical and so, so honest and real.

It is very lengthy, occasionally also overly wordy and feels like an entire series crammed into one book, yet this kept the pace fast and messy. Giving more of a sense of the chaos and unpredictability of reality in war and rebellion.

A story with the undertone of true loyalty, the importance of a family you found for yourself and of making your own choices. Of freedom.

"We pray for rain," Touraine said.
"No. " Jaghotai squeezed Touraine's arm tightly.
"Be the rain." ( )

This book was a RIDE. While I felt like I couldn't put it down, I often felt confused as to how I was still reading it, until I remembered it was about twice as long as most of the books I read. I struggled with how to rat this for a while, as reading this book was not always an enjoyable process. The blurbs promise that this book will break your heart, and while it certainly achieves that, I also wasn't sure how I felt about the fact that I spend large portions of the book INCANDESCENTLY FURIOUS WITH BOTH of the main characters. Several times I stopped and asked myself if I actually liked either of these women AT ALL. Finally I realized these were the wrong questions, because what I WAS was invested. I wanted so desperately for both of them to DO better and BE better and HAVE better. I also loved how incredibly sapphic this book was. There were only two heterosexual relationships in the whole book that I can remember, and they were only "onscreen" for about a minute. In contrast, nearly every interesting character in this book is a woman, and nearly all of them were wlw, or bi, or unattached, in a way that was completely normalized.

There is a lot of evil in this book -- of colonialism, of classism, of racism, etc. Reading this at the same time as reading a history of women in the U.S. Civil War almost certainly increased the screaming inside my heart. There is a lot of depth and trauma and conflict that can make this challenging to engage with, but also makes it so resonant and gripping.

An excellent read. ( )