Aidan was embedded with the element of Fire. Enticed by a Kin’s promise of prestige his life becomes dangerous as his bloodlust becomes stronger and a darker presence starts speaking to him.

In this book, we learn more about the Church, magic, and the Dark Lady. The dark tones of the book really left me thinking there was no hope at all. The pacing of the story is fast and there is never a lull moment. There is always something to be learned about the story or about the characters.

Aidan’s personality is accurately captured on the book’s description, but to sum it up, he’s arrogant and dangerously ambitious. There are snippets of his humanity shown throughout the book that give us an image of his life before everything fell apart and I found myself caring about his situation. Other than that, I found it difficult to like Aidan. He is very much a character who acts first and doesn’t care for the consequences.

Tomas is not as lethal or as illusive as he was portrayed in the first book. Perhaps he didn’t have to work as hard because Aidan readily embraced Tomas’ charms. I had to remind myself that he was a cunning dangerous being. Kahler does write badass female characters though. While all the characters have experienced loved ones passing away with magic usage, the females seem to be the ones who learn to move on and become stronger.

With how the story wrapped up I am curious how brash Aidan will be. I do want to see how Aidan and Tenn with interact with each other. Will there be a big confrontation between he two? With the presence of either boys be a positive influence or a negative influence on the other? While a small part of me is optimistic that Aidan will undergo major character development, past reading experiences of stories with dark undertones often remain bleak.

I am looking forward to the next book. I do care for the fates of the characters though (Tenn mostly), and my questions from the first book still need to be answered.

I enjoyed this book but I must confess that I didn't read the first one (I didn't know it was part of a series). I thought the characters were interesting and the plot intriguing. I didn't feel lost not having read the first one but will likely go back to the first to read it.

Alright, so.

I liked the concept of this book. I didnt even realize it was the second in a series and did some research to make sure I would be able to follow along. I was able to just fine.

I tried to enjoy it. In the end though the main character was such a jerk I couldnt keep going. I ended up DNF about halfway through, after looking at other reviews and finding the character didnt get better.

This might be the right story for someone else, but it wasnt for me.

So, I had no idea that this was actually book #2 in a series, which to me says that the author did an excellent job ensuring that new readers were able to keep up with what was going on in the book with no prior knowledge.

As for the book, it's an urban dystopian fantasy book where there are four basic factions. The Kin (the evil people), The Hunters (most of whom have some kind of magical ability), The Church (self-explanatory), and regular humans stuck in the middle of all of the above. The main character is an anti-hero named Aiden who starts the book off by killing someone (not too much of a spoiler), but then it kind of all goes downhill from there.

You end up rooting for the hero even though you realize he's a huge asshole and has some real baggage he needs to deal with. You're never quite sure if Aiden is evil now or going to be evil in the near future. He definitely has reasons for all of his actions, as misguided as those often are.

Overall, I found the entire book a fun read and I would definitely enjoy seeing the rest of the series when it comes out.

Runebinder took a lot of effort to get through, in order to get to this book. I enjoyed the diversity and the unique take on magic and apocalyptic disaster stuff, but it just ended up feeling like a bunch of things happening to happen. Definitely not a favorite, and it did not inspire me to rush into this one.

Set in a distant future, this book kept me coming back for more. Showing that not every story is about the obvious good guy. Well written, good character development, and addictive story line. The story moves in a decent speed and does not leave you lacking.

I couldn't. I tried, but this is the first book I have DNF'd in years. Right form the start it felt forced with gratuitous tropes.

3.25/5 stars

I'd like to start off by saying I have never read the first book in the series, so there may be some things that I didn't understand because of this.

I tried hard to get into this book, but it just isn't for me. I found it to be alright, but nothing worth going crazy about. I LOVE books that involve magic or any paranormal/supernatural elements in it, but this just wasn't for me. The writing style wasn't anything that made me get sucked into the world, and it didn't get me attacthed to characters either. I thought Aidan was interesting, but I found him to just be a dick, for lack of words, most of the time. I didn't find him reedemable at all, even though the author probably wanted him to be. I found myself trying to drag myself through this, and I almost stopped reading entirely at one point. This just wasn't for me, but I don't doubt that there are people who would love this. Overall, it was alright, just not for me.

I received this ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Unfortunately, I could not get into this book at all. I found the writing to be subpar, the plot to be a bit boring and the constant grammatical errors and ebook formatting issues to be distracting.

Aidan was not a very intriguing and relatable character to me. As much as I tried to like the story since I tend to gravitate towards this genre, it feel flat for me.