I haven't read the sequel, either.
I was provided an ARC of this book through NegGalley.
The premise of this book sounded great and I was excited to read it. I enjoy the mythology that the book was based on, so I was really ready to dig in to this book.
I encountered problems right from the beginning, however, and it really affected my ability to enjoy what I was reading and identify with the main character. The books begins with a memory of the main character being forcibly kidnapped from her parents at gun-point (well, it was some type of firearm. The use of guns, pistols, muskets, etc. in the world the author created was a little fuzzy). Then, years later, we meet our heroine again, and she resents her parents for never trying to rescue her, feels that all of their beliefs and customs are silly and backward, and cares for the king who brutally kidnapped her and has held her hostage for all these years. And this is in spite of the fact that everyone at court treats her like she's a peasant and has no business rubbing elbows with them.
When El is forced to leave the palace and travel to her true homeland, she refuses to contemplate that other forces might have been at work, that the man who took her as a child was a bad person, and that her parents have always cared for her.
The way El acts toward the old king and her real family made her very unlikable to me. I also had a hard time reconciling the fact that she knew she had some sort of magical powers, and even "used" them at least once a year, but was continually surprised at her abilities. I really just wanted to yell at her sometimes.
If the prologue had been left out, the beginning of the book would have flowed so much better. El could have had flashes of memories, or nightmares, and then the true events of the night she was taken could have been revealed to her by her trusted maid right before she was forced to flee. That would have made all of El's confusing attitudes, feelings, and motivations seem much more believable and understandable.
I really wanted to press on with the book, even with my dislike of the heroine, because I wanted to know what would happen to her and the other characters in the book. I wanted to learn how their problems would be solved and how their world would unfold. El was just so very hard to understand that is was very difficult to do so, however. She was flopping back and forth every other paragraph, and I just wanted to shake her and say, "Why do you think this way?! That makes absolutely no sense!"
The world-building was hard to follow in the beginning, as well. There were a lot of names to remember, and many of them were similar, with lots of vowels going on. Circumstances, "historical" events, and politics were not really explained well.
This book had good "bones" but it was just not fleshed out well. I really wanted to like it, and I tried very hard. But it just did not work for me.
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