Reminded me a lot of LOTR.
Hoewver the info dumping is too much - the exposition is really heavy handed and theres so much packed into this book that it just makes everything muddled. I didn't connect to any of the characters and I felt the last line of the book felt out of place for a fantasy.

Overall the book was ok. I didn't enjoy the wirting style much since everything felt like it was falling in place two seconds after mentioning it (like the author almost spoils what's going to happen on the next page when you think about what you're reading). The characters were ok but I wasn't able to built a connection to them.

DNFd at 25%. I just could not get past the writing, it feels like it was written by a teenager. The main issues for me were the lack of description, the “telling” instead of “showing”, the cliches (such as “he released the breath he was holding”) and the way she references characters oftentimes made it hard to understand who’s doing what. How did the author manage to put in so much exposition through characters straight up describing the magic system and politics and still make it confusing? As for characters, I didn’t get very far into the book to talk about them in depth but I found the main character to be quite bland and it was weird how her backstory would randomly pop up when convenient, like the author couldn’t find a way to make it happen naturally (for example; she sees a painting and we learn that she used to be an apprentice for an artist and got bullied and miraculously a few pages later one of the bullies shows up) I do really like the premise (and, from what I could understand of it, the world seemed interesting) and think she is very promising. I would definitely pick up more of her books in the future once her writing is more polished.

I was reeled in by the interesting magic system and the thrilling action scenes. While it definitely leans more towards high fantasy, M.E Royce’s world building had me really enjoying the story.

Wanted to enjoy it, but it's just not clicking. Unfortunately I don't have all that much to say about it right now. I feel bad giving it a low rating as it very well could just be a me problem right now. I think I will give it another shot in the near future and I will update this review.

I rather enjoyed this! I thought there would be a lot of romance in it as there usually is in my experience in the first book of a trilogy, but the only bit of romance is very slight fake dating.

The only thing I did not like was how jumpy it got, but I do think this is because I read too quickly to the point I skim and also I did take hours between reading sessions, so I am going to overlook this.

OMG WHERE DO I START? PLEASE READ THIS BOOK GUYS. THIS IS THE BEST BOOK YOU'RE GONNA READ THIS YEAR. SO SO GOOD. 5 STARS FROM ME.