Sabrina Chase

The premise of this book sounded intriguing, and the storyline is interesting although straightforward. Going by the writing style, I rather suspect I'm not in its target readership. There was more angst and less subtlety/intrigue than I had hoped for.

The prose was tidy, and I didn't notice any obtrusive typos. I wasn't massively keen on the thinly disguised place names. In eg Moorcock's Hawkmoon books, the altered names fit in with his multiverse setting, but that wasn't the case here.

There are two main PoV characters. Especially in the middle, we seemed to hop between their heads so frequently that I wasn't always clear who was supposed to be thinking what. This wasn't helped by various conversations explaining things to each other, followed by internal musings going over the stuff and their angst yet again. That really bogged things down for me. The other characters don't have a lot of nuance: the hostile ones are up front about it, and the helpful ones remain supportive without any personal agendas.

The plot was easy to follow and made sense. It felt like there was more emphasis on Ardhuin and Dominic's relationship than the political/social shenanigans. Again, maybe some lack of nuance with how things were spelled out. I always remained aware of the author directing the story.… (meer)