Iron and Magic

I really loved Hugh's character in the main series even though he was evil, so I was looking forward to reading him as the protagonist here, but this one fell a bit flat for me. The relationship between him and Elara was a typical fantasy novel enemies to lovers situation and didn't have anything extra special to it. I also felt like Hugh lost a bit of his prior characterisation and just fell into a standard antagonistic lover role. Too heavy on the antagonism too between them, not enough actual buildup of their relationship.