Gild

A lot of people have been talking about the series lately and I finally decided to give it a try. I'm always super hesitant to read hyped books because they almost never live up to the hype. I kind of feel that way with this even though I am intrigued and plan to continue.

For me, this was very much a first book that was rocky and trying to figure out its place in the world. I think there were a lot of underdeveloped ideas and storylines that didn't quite work for me. Not to mention the amount of threatened abuse Auren had to deal with. I think what bothered me the most about it is how Auren seems to be strong and want to stick up for others but also kind of does nothing for herself until the last minute. We got hints about how she grew up but I honestly don't get how she ended up where she is in this book without having thicker skin and the ability to stand up for herself. She just kind of lets the threats and abuse happen to her even though we know she came from a hard life before.

For me, it was the last 50% of this book where the actual story started to come into play and I kind of understood what the point was. I think we could have skipped a lot of the introduction in this book and spent more time on the events of the 2nd half so they were not as rushed. I think we wasted a lot of time with Auren in her cage feeling sorry for herself when we could have been learning more about the world and more about her past. I still feel like we know nothing about her other than a few hints she gave to Sail.

The ending was a curveball with a reveal that just adds to my point earlier about this being a rocky book trying to figure out what it was. I think the ending is when the author started to figure out where she wanted to take these characters and what world they were living in. I'm hoping the next books are more concrete in terms of their direction. I will be continuing for now because everyone says the next book is better, but I will say the first half of this book was super dense and hard to get through.

2.5 ⭐️'s
The start to this book was rough. It almost deterred me from reading the rest but I'm kinda glad I trudged through. It wasn't an amazing book by any means but it was somewhat enjoyable. I am left with a lot of questions and confusion but for a fantasy book this was a pretty short read so maybe the rest of the series will answer those questions? That's if I decide to continue. I have a lot of issues with Midas and Auren's relationship, giving Tampon from the ACOTR series but so much worse, I really hope we are supposed to hate Midas in the end. I also found Auren absolutely awful for so much of this book she only gets slightly less terrible towards the end. There's a few other gripes but it's giving knock off Sarah J. Maas but worse.