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tinysierra's review
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
This book contains:
- spiders and spiderwebs
- dark creepy forest with faces and souls
- Nice worldbuilding
- A badass blind side character
- threats of war between kingdoms, political intrigue
- strong main character who knows how to fight, who turns out to have the rarest magical powers
- a focus on friendships
- Asian coded characters
I like that the +600 year old Spider King was not a mysterious sexy love interest preying on a teenager. There is no romance plot. The story focuses on the main character trying to figure out her powers and how to stop a war.
This book was decent but it didn’t really “wow” me. I liked the pieces of lore that we got, and I thought the characters were nice but they didn’t amaze me. I didn’t really feel the bond between Saengo and Sirscha. It was described that they cared for each other and they were clearly close but I wish we got to see more of their friendship on page before the start of the book.
I enjoyed Theyen and Sirscha’s sassy banter. They could have turned into a kind of rivals to lovers type romance but I liked that they stayed friends/allies.
I think this is a good book for anyone looking for a fantasy book with magic and politics but without the romance.
I may be mistaken, but I thought I saw this book in a recommendation list for Aro or Ace rep. However, unless I missed something, there are no explicitly stated asexual or aromantic characters. I don’t believe Sirscha states a sexual or romantic preference. But, if you are aro or ace, you’ll probably enjoy the lack of romance whether the characters themselves are aro / ace or not.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Blood, Violence, Body horror, Death, Fire/Fire injury, and Injury/Injury detail
Moderate: Terminal illness, War, and Bullying
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