4.25 stars rounded up. What you’ll get when you read this:

- Battles and Tournaments
- A journey / adventure
- Cool magical creatures
- Murder mystery
- Golden retriever MMC
- Slow burn romance subplot with mild spice

This was super fun. Despite how action packed this was, I personally felt the vibes were very cozy. I had a nice time curling up before bed with this. The stakes never felt so high that I was sincerely stressed, it was just enough to be entertaining.

Johnson really excels with his descriptions of scenery. I felt like I was there, I saw everything so clearly - the taverns, the forests, the battles, the food... it felt real.

I fell in love with the characters, especially Aeveus and his two friends. They were clever, sincerely funny, and had great banter between them. There were lovely found family vibes.

At times when female characters are written by male authors they can be borderline (if not overtly) offensive. That is NOT the case here. Johnson did a great job at making Karessa just another person without centering her sexuality or descriptions of her body. But my one critique is that I didn't find myself connecting with her as much as Aeveus. I just didn't feel like Johnson fully captured the heart and mind of a woman. When reading her POV it sometimes felt as though I was looking at her through Aeveus' eyes.

However, The book is mostly in Aeveus' POV, which I preferred. I think his POV was done exceptionally well. I related to him so much, and I found myself really feeling for him and routing for him to succeed. I enjoyed reading romance from a male POV.

I will 100% be picking up book 2 - because that ending?!? Totally took me off guard, I didn't expect it. I'm so excited to see where this goes!!

This was a pretty dang decent fantasy novel.

I really liked the pacing of the world-building, it never felt info-dumpy to me and it never made me sit there wondering "what on earth are they talking about? I don't know anything about that yet." And I think that says a lot about a fantasy novel and the author. Usually world-building always leaves something to be desired.

This world was cool and had cool creatures (which is always a major selling point for me).

I did wish for a bit more characterization though. I really am such a character-driven reader. You gotta make me fall totally in love with them. Don't get me wrong, these were not flat or boring characters, I just wanted a bit more. Especially when it came to the romantic development. I just wished for a teeny scooch more.

There were times when I could tell it was written by a man (I usually try to stay away from books written by men because they tend to be offensive and infuriating, the girlies know what I'm talking about and the exact kinds of scenes I am referring to - there are entire reddit threads dedicated to it), but this wasn't offensive, just weird at times (that could just be a personal thing).

Thanks to NetGalley for the e-ARC of this book in exchange for my honest review! My Goodreads review is up and my TikTok (Zoe_Lipman) review will be up at the end of the month with my monthly reading wrap-up.