Anne

I thought the world and the magic were interesting and there were a lot of good story elements, but there were some elements that made it hard to fully enjoy the book.

I thought a prisoner having to become the poison taster was an interesting concept, that made sense for the story. I liked Yelena and her recourcefulness and determination. I also liked the friendship she developed with some of the commander's soldiers. The plot was engaging and I was entertained by the book as long as I tried to ignore some of the issues I was having.

"warning": I'm going slightly into things happening later in the book in my review, I don't think it's spoiler-y enough to cover, mostly things you can guess if you're familiar with this type of story, but maybe don't read it if you don't want to know anything about the book.

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(At first) I though Valek was an interesting character. Yelena and his growing closeness was interesting to me until I realised how old he must be and that they were supposed to have a romantic relationship. Based on the information we get about him killing the King like 15 years ago, he must be like twice her age! She's 19 I think, and he's like mid 30's? That's just creepy. Not to mention that the way he fell for her and communicated that didn't feel like something a 30-year old adult would do. Couldn't he have just been like a mentor figure? I feel like that could still have been the close relationship she needed and would inspire the loyalty the story needs, but without the romance, this book didn't need it and it made the story worse.

Also, maybe I understood it wrong cause the author was very vague, but I feel like it was implied that they had sex when they were hiding for some hours to escape the prison. This would be after they had been captured and locked up for 2 days, and Yelena had been very sick for like a whole night and was covered in bodily fluids from that at some point. That being the first time they had sex is a weird writing choice.

Another thing is that I am unsure how we are supposed to feel about commander Ambrose. Yelena seems to like him and feel some loyalty to him and he has his kind moments. But he also orders all magicians in the country to be killed, which are usually children, to protect his secret, that's he's actually (born as) a woman, which I'm not sure if the commander is supposed to be a trans man or is just hiding his/her gender to be a more convincing leader? . And while his country's system seems to promote equality, he doesn't seem to actually make sure everyone is treated fair and that the people he appoints to lead are good people. Including the whole 'no murder for any reason even self-defense' rule. Plus the whole carving a letter on Valeks's chest as a reminder of his loyalty is weird.

Speaking of Valek, there's a similar two-facedness there. He seems relatively kind in the book and does some good things, like allowing that kind of wrongly imprisoned man to start a new life and helping Yelena of course, but of-page seems to have done horrible things, like killing innocent children because the commander says so (maybe we'll find out he actually didn't kill them but sent them to the other country or something, but still, Yelena is already "passionately in love" with him despite that). The author just seems to gloss over some of the more horrible things that happened before or during the book in general. Maybe that's just because it's a young adult book and they want to show the bleak history of the main characters without being explicit, but that just makes it feel like it's not being taken that seriously at times.

While writing this review I started to doubt my 3 star rating, but I think it does make sense, the overall story I'd probably rate slightly higher, there were a lot of interesting elements and it read easily. I'm mostly just not sure how much I want to take away from my rating due to the in my opinion problematic elements.. I'll keep it like this for now