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3/5

Thank you HarperCollins UK for providing me with an arc in exchange for an honest review.

Unfortunately, this book really missed the mark for me. I didn't enjoy it half as much as I've enjoyed El-Arifi's other works. I found the premise for the worldbuilding interesting, but throughout the book found that it wasn't explored in any significant way and even that lost my interest. I think what my fatal error was was thinking this was an epic fantasy like The Ending Fire trilogy, or a military fantasy like you might predict from the opening chapters. This book, to me, reads more as a romantasy and that's sadly not a subgenre that I enjoy as much.

I found a lot of the plot quite bland as not much seemed to happen for the vast majority of the story and I also found it all quite obvious. The problem with incorporating prophecies into your plot is that you need to make sure it's either a dreadful, looming thing that everyone understands and fears or, if you want it to be shocking, you must make sure the wording of it is subtle enough for a clever twist. Unfortunately, the prophecies in this book yielded their answers fairly easily. Therefore, when the twist revealed itself, I couldn't help but be annoyed that I knew this information hundreds of pages before.
This was a problem I encountered throughout most of the book. Everything was too obvious. It became predictable and stale under the light of such blatancy. Not only did the plot beats not hit because of this but the romances didn't either because I could see everything coming from a mile away.

This is quite a critical review and I do apologise for being so negative, I much prefer raving about books I love. I think what made this so disappointing was that I know Saara El-Arifi can write with much more nuance and intricacy. I'm not even as much of a fan of The Ending Fire trilogy as others are, however that series is a much better show of skill. It confuses me that these series are written by the same author.

Perhaps this all stems from my lack of interest in romantasy as a genre, perhaps not. I just vehemently dislike when everything is dropped for the sake of a romantic plotline, it rids the rest of the story of any substance. The world in this book felt more like a backdrop for these relationships than an actual world teeming with life. The plot, too, felt very simple and forgotten about for a lot of the story in order to focus on the character relationships. Don't get me wrong, I love character-driven stories, but this book didn't show meaningful choices or changes in the characters enough for me to connect with them. Everything felt like an afterthought to the romances, as if only there to facilitate that aspect of the story.

When I read The Final Strife, the first book in El-Arifi's other series, I didn't fully connect with it, however I could admire what was being done and what it was clearly setting up for in the next book (which I enjoyed a lot more). With this book, there weren't even those aspects for me to admire or sit in anticipation for. Honestly, a lot of this book felt unnecessary.

I'm being quite negative, but that's sadly been my experience reading this book. It's been such a disappointment for me, but I do hope others enjoy it more. Sorry everyone!