This fantasy novel was gifted to me by the author Christopher Martinez in exchange for my review.

I want to start off by saying that I really love this cover. It’s professional and really works with the topic of the story. It’s got a slightly older fantasy cover feel to it but those are still my favourite so I’d definitely have taken a further look at this story thanks to the cover.

I also liked the majority of the characters. I felt a few could do with more depth but the lack of information I wanted was more related to the style than a character problem specifically. I definitely cared about the majority of the people and what happened to them, especially Danario. I did feel the princess fell in love a bit too quickly, however. I’d have expected her to be a little wary.

On top of that I found the battle scenes were also amazing. They were described in just the right level of detail that I could imagine them without feeling there was too much for me to take in.

Unfortunately that’s where the good things about this book ended for me. Plot wise I can’t really complain but I can’t really praise it either. It wasn’t overly complicated and combined with the style I felt the whole book was rather brief. Every chapter seemed to be a long time after the one before and moved from one reason to fight to another, with little in between.

I’ve thought about this at length and I can’t quite put my finger on exactly what was missing, but some of the normal ‘fluff’ from around the edges just wasn’t there and it felt like there was little down time. I was given very little apart from action and I’d have liked more emotion or information gathering, or lead up to the decisions of what to attack next and why, rather than just the battles and most major decisions.