Support my blog and purchase this book through my amazon affiliate link: https://amzn.to/3p87txc

Overall Thoughts:

I really enjoyed this book! I am a sucker for a good political sci-fi story and I love the exploration of different cultures and this book really hit that spot. It's an interesting blend of sci-fi and fantasy. The setting and most of the alien races in the book are firmly sci-fi, but the main characters and their culture feel plucked from a fantasy world. So you have this interesting dynamic of a fantasy race trying to get by in a sci-fi world.

The pace of this book is very slow. In 450 pages, we barely get through three days of story time. This means that we get a lot of different perspectives from a variety of characters providing a rich, fleshed out view of the cultures and character dynamics, but if you're looking for a quick, punchy sci-fi adventure, look somewhere else!

When I stepped away from this book, I found my mind drifting back to the characters and the story while doing other chores. For me, a book that I can't get out of my head is a good book!

Deeper Dive:

My biggest complaint with this book was that it leans a bit too heavily for my liking into overly emotional female characters. It's not bad enough to ruin the book for me, and as a reader, I am fairly sensitive to this. Still, it stuck out to me as annoying in a few places. For example, lecturing a young female character about 'controlling her emotions' is a bit cringy to me, even though there was some justification for it in the context of the story. That being said, if it didn't ruin the book for me, it isn't likely to ruin it for most people. This is a personal pet peeve.

This story plays with tropes and conventions of sci-fi and fantasy, but does usually pulls and twist those tropes enough to not be predictable.

There is a lot of PoV jumping from chapter to chapter in this book and it is handled very well. The different PoVs serve the story well and provide a nuanced perspective on the story. Each character had a unique voice and their own goals and concerns. I enjoyed the different PoVs.

There is a lot of world building to be done in this story. As mentioned in the overall thoughts, this story shows a contact point between a sci-fi world and a fantasy world, which means there are two worlds that need to be world built. Because the story takes place in the sci-fi world, a lot of the early exposition focuses on that setting and only the bare minimum of the fantasy elements are explained. This establishes a sense of mystery around the magic that the main characters use. For those who want to know all the rules of a magic system from the start, this might be frustrating. Major elements of the magic system aren't positioned until the last hundred pages of the book, and even then it's a sparse description. That being said, while there were a few points where I was confused by the magic, I think it overall worked for the story. The main characters deeply understand their own magic system, so it would be strange for them to wax poetic about it. I hope future books provide more opportunity for the characters to better explain what their magic can do and how it works.

There is a frustrating note to the driving tension throughout the book, especially the first half of the book. One major character is absolutely grating. For me, the frustrating elements were tempered enough with other story beets that it didn't drive me away, but a reader who just doesn't like that frustrating driving tension might not enjoy this story.

This book contains a simplified language that is common between all species. It's awkward and stilted and there is dialog spoken in this language. That dialog can be confusing to follow. I think it works for the world since the language is as unyielding and confusing for the characters as it is for the reader and this writing choice helps with immersion, but for readers who don't like that sort of thing, this might be off putting. I will say, there aren't many conversations in this mutual language and most dialog is perfectly understandable.

I'll keep my comments on the ending vague as I want to keep this review spoiler free, but I found the ending satisfying. It is clear that the story is the first in the series and it sets up a path forward, but it doesn't end in an unsatisfying way. The story's main threads are all wrapped up by the end of the book.