As with most Durst books I enjoyed a lot of this; the characters, the dialogue, the use of familiar tropes given new life. Somehow or another I've been reading a lot of "post-saving the world" type books, though none that are this far past (a few decades) or wherein the main character is closer to my age than not.

I admit the use of bones creeped me out at first, though maybe not as much as killer trees that want to suck the blood from your body for the giggles.

Seriously, Durst has been finding new paranoias for me to find with each fresh novel.

As always though, the strength of Durst's novels relies on her characters. How they interact, how they banter, how they exist with each other. Here they are old friends who defeated the Big Bad and then lost touch as they each tried to deal with the fallout. Seeing them reconnect and deal with those wounds (often at inconvenient moments) underscored how deep the trauma was they each struggled to move past.

And for those worried, standalone! No fuss or wait, a complete tale in one book. Isn't that lovely? ( )

*A Thank you to Netgalley for allowing me to read this book. This is my fair and honest review*

Hello Fellow Readers

I was really hyped up for this book, the thought behind it seemed pretty epic and I settled in to what I hoped would be a five star book, I did not get that. The book isn't bad, the story is actually pretty interesting even if it was a little slow, which was disappointed as the beginning felt very fast paced. I think my disappointment stemmed from the fact that the main character Kreya just did not connect with me. The book did change POVs once in a while and I really wished they had focused on the other characters more rather than Kreya as I found them way more interesting.

Overall, the book was okay and may be for someone who would like a slower fantasy. ( )

Very well written. Nuanced, unique, and flawed characters. Interesting magic. Immersive worldbuilding. Good, if slow, pacing.
What more could you want?

Sadly there is one flaw that, combined with the slow pacing, killed my willingness to keep reading.
Stupidity.
It's not even that bad really. This is not a case of horrible tstl. Everyone is just stupid enough for the antagonist to conveniently stay one or two steps ahead.
The frustrating part about it is that much of the very slow-moving plot revolves around the cast desperately trying to metaphorically catch up to the antagonist and the one thing preventing them is their own simplemindedness.
It's like an imperfection on a computer screen. If you are just casually using the screen it doesn't really bother you but if you sit in front of it and stare at the imperfection for hours, day out and day in, it will drive you mad.

The book has a sad atmosphere revolving around loss, the fear of loss, dread, and helplessness which drew me in very effectively (I'm a sucker for this) but the core plot is a classic fantasy defeat the bad guy.

Keep in mind that I only read 60% of the book so there might be a major twist I missed because of my impatience. Looking at the very high quality of writing and characterization I wouldn't put it past the author entirely to pull something like that off but I would be surprised.

Without this major irritant, this would've been a strong 4 stars easily. I still feel like giving it 4 stars, but it just feels wrong to rate a book that annoyed me enough for me to drop it, more than 3 stars. ( )

I really enjoyed the world building in this novel, all the different types of magic and how they can be used was interesting. I love how this story wrapped up, Sarah Beth Durst did a great job of showing that all the information in a war is accurate, as the soldiers only get the information being given to them by their superiors.

Overall, an enjoyable read and a great stand-alone fantasy novel. ( )

I picked this out because her book Conjured was so well reviewed but I had given that book a pass because its target audience is YA. This book claims its target audience is Adult so I was excited. And, I like things a bit dark, look at that cover, its got to have something dark going on.

It took me about 10 months to finish this story. Never really wanting to pick it up unless I was waiting at the doctor's office or some other time when I had nothing else to do/read. I didn't want to DNF but there was nothing compelling me to read. It's a very slow-moving story that is not that interesting for some reason. There were lots of individual bits that were interesting when I think on it, and the first few chapters were pretty outstanding but ultimately, it's a story of heroes working towards defeating a bad guy (again) and I wasn't here for that.

In the author's after notes she said she wrote the story to show there is always more life to live. For example, other books reach the climax and end "happily ever after", but she set this up with the intention of showing that life goes on. I can see that about the book but most of this book has the "heroes" return to their past nemesis to deal with the same threat so I'm not really sure it was successful in that regard.

The only thing "adult" about the story is that the heroes are fully adult but there is nothing dark or mature going on. It is a good vs. evil story with mature in age and experience, characters. There was a unique magic system, and her pet constructs were adorable. There was talk of the condition of the heroes after the last big battle, like where they were in life, but all these things were in between the lines of attempting to defeat the bad guy again. *yawn*

I can't recommend and probably won't give the author another shot. ( )