By Naomi Hughes
Publisher: Independent
Print Length: 412 pages
Release Year: 2021
Genre: Young Adult Fantasy
Avg. Goodreads Rating: 4.02
Everyone in the Alloyed Empire fears the Destroyer. The metal in her blood gives her incendiary powers, and the coldness in her heart makes her the empress’s perfect weapon…until a rebel attack leaves her with no magic and no memories.
Her bodyguard, Tal, has long since regretted his idealistic hope of saving the Destroyer. Now that she’s powerless he can finally end her reign of terror—if he can stop himself from falling for the wicked, funny, utterly unfamiliar girl she’s become.
Nyx was furious when her brother, Tal, abandoned her to protect a tyrant. Now, she hones herself as a rebel assassin until she can kill the Destroyer and rescue Tal. But the closer she gets, the more she realizes the entire empire hinges on the decisions the three of them will make… (Goodreads)
I absolutely adored this book! I enjoyed the characters and the overall grey morality behind their motivations. They were realistically conflicted with hard decisions, and none of them was perfect. It was interesting to have multiple points of view that drastically affected how the character felt and approached the conflict.
This story is definitely character-driven, complemented by a uniquely fascinating magic system. Hughes set up the world quite well but doesn’t venture far from what is necessary. This book manages to include a relatively complex magic system for a YA book but manages to define its parameters without falling into the pit of info-dump despair.
This book deserves much more attention than it’ll probably get. It truly delivers when it promises a story for fans of the Grishaverse and sets the foundations for a series with the potential to be as successful.
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