Leena, a young beast master, is exiled from her native homelands because of a grand "misunderstanding" planned and spearheaded by her ex-fiancé (Wynn). She is forced to do many abhorrent things to survive. After years of skirting the line and accruing quite a bit of negative karma; we encounter Leena being targeted by a group of nefarious assassins (the Cruor). She quickly proves herself to be pretty daring by attempting to barter for her life with sed group of assassins. The book then follows Leena as she and the leader of the Cruor (Noc) spiral into a world filled with cruel truths and longing for each other.
I received this book as an ARC from the author via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. I liked this book, although I think that I wanted to like it a bit more than I did. Being a cover art geek, I found the cover to be very enticing. If you've ever read a review by me, you'll soon realize that I'm a sucker for a blue and purple scheme. That coupled with the badass looking central female figure AND the beast silhouette in the background had me clamoring for the book. It seemed that the story would be full of mystery, magic, and some epic magically infused battle scenes. I learned, yet again, that my imagination sometimes sets me up for disappointment.
The story held great promise, and I even enjoyed the dual POV storytelling. While, not my favorite type of recanting, it's started growing on me as more authors become better at utilizing it. The author doesn't disappoint on this level and does a great job of painting the experiences from both main characters’ views. There's a great sense of buildup on the underlying "mystery" of the book. However, we never get the release of a proper conclusion. I was rather upset when the secret wasn't revealed at the end of the story. After many hours of mulling (not consecutive), I surmised that I would have to accept it as a cliff hanger. That didn't completely satisfy me, but at least I was able to move past enough to write this review.
Other than the letdown of not being able to put a fancy green check mark next to ‘Mystery Solved’; I had some difficulty around the naivete of the female main, Leena. Sigh, Leena. I think that I felt all the things I was supposed to feel for her. Sadness at her exile, the desperation of her will to survive, despair at her lonely existence. On first being introduced to Leena, I started building a picture of a woman like that of the one on the book cover. Boy was I ever wrong. Instead, our heroine is super naïve right from the start. She is constantly tricked by the men in her life and doesn't even know enough about herself to interpret her personal feelings honestly. This is a stark contrast to a woman who has fought against all the odds to survive in a strange land alone.
We get glimpses into her overall dreams and aspirations but find that she is 'Okay' with putting them aside once love is found, or rather once she realizes that love has been found. That makes me wonder how much these were goals and not just girlish fantasies. On that note, I also expected to see some growth in Leena which didn't occur. Even after she decides to defer her dreams for companionship, I wasn't 100% sure that she was fulfilling her desires rather than just bypassing them to satisfy the emotional contentment of her new lover. Once again, a stark contrast to my ass-kicking fem warrior. On the other hand, there's our second narrator, Noc.
Noc, is supposedly the big bad head of a well-known and feared group of super assassins called the Cruor. They are known for being especially efficient and discrete in their dealings, and to-date they have no incomplete bounties. Sounds badass to me. Except, first "super-assassin" is summarily disabled and captured with little to no effort by our still semi-neophyte beast master. The other assassins we meet along the way are not what you'd expect either. While wonderfully introduced, they often display many "non-assassin" qualities. The description of the method used when becoming an assassin leads me to believe that much of their pre-assassin selves was lost in the transformation. Enter Noc. Here is an example of what an assassin should be; cool, detached and deadly. Well, only to a point, apparently his true self is contrary to all the early descriptors used. He's cursed, conflicted, and seriously lacks in self-control when around something he truly wants. As I read through the book, I concluded that these were his pre-assassin traits. It would be great to find out more about his past to determine if this was the real reason for such conflicted emotions versus actions.
All-in-all Martineau did a good job in storytelling. I'm hoping that since this is the first in a series that we'll grow to understand the characters more as the series progresses. I can't wait to find out more about the ancillary characters and their world. Here comes my caveat. The lack of truly epic battles and in-depth surreal scenery makes me hesitant to recommend this book to fans of high fantasy although I'm pretty sure that was the target base
I look forward to reading more by this author and hope to see a bit more epic-ness in her fantasy.
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