While there is some action, this dense yet flowing fantasy is all about the relationship between the two main characters. ( )

I really ended up liking this book. At first the pov it is written in didn't work, but I read through and because essentially it is a love letter the way it is written works.
Yes, it's a love story. It took me almost 200 pages until it physically became a love story before I realized. Don't let that bother you. It's very good. I've never needed a lot of battles or action if the story can carry itself.
( )

I absolutely loved this novel. There were a few very short moments I was worried it was losing it's way, but they didn't last long.i lived the voice, I loved the characters, I loved the story. I'll definitely be picking up the next one. ( )

epic fantasy is normally not in my comfort zone so i was a bit wary going into this read. i did have a little trouble remembering who everyone was in relation to the main characters, but in general i found the world-building and the elements of fantasy pretty easy to follow and understand. (usually this means that it's fantasy-lite or pretty surface level, but this is actually more extensive.) i love epistolary novels but i don't love the conceit used here, where the letter writer (shefali) is recapping (for us) everything the letter reader (shizuka) already knows. here and there were things that would have been new information for shizuka, or new insight into something they experienced together, but this was more an info dump, and i don't favor those. i also had a hard time with the way the two main characters were initially written. i understand that they were gods/royalty/whatever, but they were not believably written as children. but they weren't supposed to be; i just didn't like how that was handled, personally.

that said, i loved their relationship and how they complemented each other. i loved shizuka's ego and shefali's quiet strength. also, this is beautifully written. one of the side characters is a poet and while infrequently rivera had to write in his voice or with his words, most of this book could have qualified. the language is fantastic. so much of the phrasing was just lovely; it sings. for me, the individual main characters, their relationship, and the writing carried this book. the battles and the demon fighting are not really my thing, but i found myself kind of enjoying even that aspect of this, probably because it wasn't the focus and because the writing was so exceptional. (except i really didn't like reading about all that happened with shefali after she became a blackblood, where the demon was actually changing her physically - the talons, the teeth, the ears, the eyes. i think there is some really good metaphoric stuff to think about here, and i do really like the way she talked about racism in the book, so maybe this actually has some relation to that; i'll have to give that more thought. or maybe this is just rivera's take on zombies, which i hate reading about.)

i don't think there is a lot of fantasy that isn't white/america/european centered, so it was really nice to read this eastern inspired take on a fantasy world. and to have such overtly queer characters was great. i expected that to be more hidden than it was. as to the way she talked about race - it was really clear that shefali was darker and her people (the qorin) were brown, and that that made a difference in how they were treated when they were with the hokkaran people. i really, really love the cover art but i wish that they had made shefali darker to better represent at least her race. (still, it is the gorgeous cover that made me pick up this book in the first place. wow.) my only remaining question, plot wise, is once shizuka is empress, why can't she bring shefali back from exile? why does shefali still have to find the phoenix feather in order to return? as ruler, can't she overrule that?

this got in my head. i was really immersed in this world and these characters that she created. so i was really swept away by all of it. really swept away. ( )

File Under: Well, the cover art was very nice.

This novel has been floating around on various TBR lists of mine for awhile, but it wasn't until my book group picked it as an option that I was willing to give it a shot. After reading about the first 100 pages my thought was that this story, while featuring some nice writing, was just not engaging my imagination. After that I made a fast skim until the end but the reality is that this whole exercise comes off as stilted to me, and I never reached a point where I felt it was worth my while to slow down and savor the novel. I'd give something else by Ms. Rivera a try, but I don't see myself returning to this trilogy. ( )