When the Moon Hatched

Tall, musclebound man with “tawny” skin, dark eyes, and is covered in scars. Oh, and he has a huge, nay, absolutely massive pe——rsonality. Paired with a pale, very, very small (so tiny, so itsy bitsy), badass/snarky woman with unnaturally pretty eyes (and/or unique hair). And what do you get? A modern romance-fantasy novel. Woo! Yay...

The only reason I even finished this book is for the worldbuilding.Which is amazing! A tidally-locked world, unique time cycle involving auroras, the dragons and other creatures. I loved the descriptors of the locales, the unique languages (for the most part), etc. I could nitpick a few things I didn't like, but they're so minor and I'm so happy to see a romantasy with actual worldbuilding that I'll let it slide (the bar is in hell).

I didn't like some of the linguistic choices. The usage of male/female made me cringe every time. Some words were just minor changes from normal words (dae - day, mahmi/pahpi - mom/dad, for example), which was kinda goofy.

There was a lot of cringe millennial dialogue. A. Lot. Of. Staccato. Writing. To. Convey. Aggression. A lot of fucks/fucking from all the characters.A lot of growling and snarling from the men. And yes, the MMC does roar when he cums, which made me laugh out loud because of course he does. No avalanches here though, so that's a plus (maybe they'll save that for book 2).

The FMC is whiny and insufferable. It got to the point where I debated if it was worth it to even continue. She's so “woe is me, I'm so damaged” and “I can't love, loving me is a death sentence” when she CLEARLY HAS PEOPLE THAT LOVE HER (Essi deserved so much goddamn better, RIP). She snarks after being tortured, for goodness sake.

The MMC is insta-love (you find out why later but it was still annoying) and even gifted her an unasked-for nickname (which is gross tbh). If there wasn't an actual plot-related reason to be so head-over-heels for her, I would have absolutely zero reason to believe he would try so hard for her. She is so aggravating and just pissed me off. The whiplash between reading Elluin and Raeve's perspectives hurt because I genuinely liked Elluin and hated who she has become. He is a consent king (mostly), so props for that over so many other MMCs out there. 

TL;DR - middling book with fascinating worldbuilding and annoying characters. I'll maybe check out the sequel, so long as it doesn't turn into smutty garbage and actually continues the world building.

I wanted to like this so badly but all I kept thinking about while reading this was, when is it going to end.

The dragons do barely jack all in this book and the amnesia is poorly written. Also the MC's feel like someone tried to mesh all the "famous" tall, dark, handsome and skinny, strong and sassy into the these 2 generic, forgettable "people."

Whatshername (I legit kept forgetting it and not caring), wants to be Yelena from Poison Study so bad. An infinitely better book by the way, with zero dragons however. Although this one didn't really have the beasts in a competent, substantial way either.

If this had minus the dragons and was about the political intrigue, wow would it have been better.

I don't think I'll be continuing this series.

I think I will re-read Poison Study by Maria V Snyder instead.

I can't say I didn't like this book at all. I enjoyed some elements of it.

I had a lot of issues with the pacing, the randomly interspersed non-main character POVs (if they had been better places they would've been much more impactful).

The mystery relating to the main character seemed a bit too weak to be dragged on through Till the end of the book. If that was the main point of the narrative I'm not sure what the whole point was to begin with.

I know this is just the first book, but even first books offer some sort of closure to some threads from the opening. This book delivers on very few of those promises if any at all.

I feel like this book does have a lot going for it, but something somewhere was missing to make the magic work.

At the end of the book, I'm still soo confused about the world building. In my eyes it feels a bit half assed. Sure we are given a massive glossary at the beginning of the novel, but it's hard switching between the book and the glossary to understand what the words mean. There were several instances where the world building could've been integrated into the narrative itself, but it didn't happen.

I'm still so genuinely confused about the magic system, and the point of the dragons and a lot of things about the world. A lot of it feels very haphazard.

I'm not sure if I'll read book 2 whenever it comes out.