There are many characters in the story, and it took me a minute to get everyone sorted. The family trees and supplied information is very useful for this. Once I immersed myself into the story, I really enjoyed it. This is the first book in the series, and as such, there is plenty to learn about the world and its politics. I like the main character, and look forward to the next volumes to see how things play out.

While I understand the negative criticism I've read about this book, I still really enjoyed the book. Loved the world but it took me almost the whole book to get a good grasp on it. I was constantly referencing the glossary in the back to remember who was who and all the politics going on. This book is the first in the Stoneslayer series and felt like one big introduction. I will NOT be reading future books in the series because this book had a rape scene (not of the FMC). Also, the info dump at 90% through the book felt a little weird.
Helen's character was great! I loved her innocence, yet strength and wittiness. Her character absolutely made the book.

The premise of this book is definitely intriguing, and it grabbed my attention right away. I also appreciate that I didn’t need special approval to read the ARC. However, once I started reading, it just didn’t deliver on its potential. The writing style felt disjointed—there was no consistency between the use of archaic/medieval and modern language. One moment, the characters are speaking like they’re from the Renaissance, and the next, it’s all very contemporary. It made the narrative hard to follow.

The world-building was also lacking. While I appreciated the glossary to help make sense of things, I wish more of that information had been naturally woven into the story. Instead, it felt like everything in the series was jam-packed into this first book, which made it overwhelming.

The characters, unfortunately, didn’t resonate with me, and the uneven flow made it difficult to immerse myself in the world. While the magic system had potential, it just didn’t come together as well as I’d hoped.

Overall, the book was a challenge to connect with, and despite its interesting concept, it struggled to live up to expectations.

****May contain spoilers****
I was really excited to read this book as it seemed like something right up my alley, but I was unfortunately disappointed. The easiest way to describe this book is disjointed, incohesive, and abrupt. The conflicts/resolutions sprinkled throughout as well as the overarching conflict with the "big bad" at the end, left much to be desired. I'm not entirely sure the author knew the direction they wanted to go with this story, which I thought had a lot of potential but ultimately fell flat. It felt like many details were thrown in haphazardly or as an afterthought. The writing style is clunky and although it gets slightly better further in, it doesn't flow well overall. I found myself distracted from the underlying storyline by how I would change the sentence structure to make it sound better. The worldbuilding is confusing (I still have no idea what time-period it is supposed to be emulating), and I found the switching back and forth of modern lingo and old timey, formal language to give a bit of whiplash. Besides the setting, the judicial and magical system, as well as the government hierarchy, were extremely hard to follow. Although there is a glossary and a chart included, an exceptional writer (in my opinion) should be able to seamlessly "show not tell" through the story they weave. I found it slightly annoying that the main character, as a doctor, was described doing CPR entirely incorrectly. There also needs to be some type of trigger warning for r*pe and a**ault, as it was very jarring to come across that late into the novel. I really wanted to like this book, and while there were a few very well written lines and I enjoyed the sassy banter from the main character, to put it plainly, this book felt messy and almost random. Not in the fun, scandalous way the description implies, but in a way that leaves the reader feeling lost and wondering what the whole point of what they just read was.