this was a great start to a series, I enjoyed getting to go on this journey and meeting the characters in this world. It was so well done and I enjoyed the way the author writes.

I loved this novel ! It's pretty unusual to read about sylphs and I loved that aspect. Ravenna had an amazing journey, she becomes stronger and realizes so many things about herself, the other sylphs and the humans. I wasn't fond of the romantic relationship, even if we don't see it for long. I would have preferred for the characters to remain friends, but oh well. Davorin was a good villain. He seemed "better" than his brother, but in the end he was as cruel and power-thirsty as him. I didn't really catch what he's done to Nadezhda, hopefully I will understand it better in the second volume. I just got that it wasn't good. I'm so excited to read the rest of this series, even more so that we will probably see dragons !

Diversity : I think Ravenna was the only white character, deaf character
TW : violence, blood, death

Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for gifting me a free digital copy of this book!

The One Who Could Not Fly surprised me with how much I ended up loving it.

This book follows the main character Ravenna, who grew up ostracised amongst the sylphs because of her small, deformed wings and unusual colouring. Pretty early on in the book she gets captured by humans, beings that are supposed to be a myth to her people, and sold into slavery.
She's thrust into this unfamiliar world where she has to learn how to adapt to the ways of humans and by doing that also look inwards. She has to determine if humans are like the nightmares described in her people's legends or if they're not all that different and what that means.

I was invested in this book right after I finished reading the prologue. I was never bored and immediately liked Ravenna as a main character. I rooted for her from the beginning and seeing her growth and character development in just book 1 was amazing to read.
Her relationship with Tacitus was one of my favourite things in this book. I'm a sucker for mentor type characters and I ended up really loving him.

I absolutely loved the plot of this book and how everything came together in the end. It was really well-paced and not once did it feel like it dragged to me. From the synopsis alone, I didn't know where the story was going to exactly. Suffice to say that I was pleasantly surprised with where it went and expanded.

The world-building was one of my favourite things of this book. The way everything was described made the world feel so tangible and real. From the clothes to the food to the environment to the political structure of the world.

I was a big fan of the writing style too. Not too complicated and really easy to read.

There is also a romance in this book that I absolutely fell in love with. Ravenna and Miska are so cute together omg. Is it kinda insta-lovey? Maybe. Do I care? Absolutely not.

Miska is another character that is just so easy to love. He is like this big cinnamon roll that just wants to do good and I just love him and I want to give him a hug. He also happens to be deaf because of a past injury and I wanted to point that out and not just erase that aspect of his character.

We're also introduced to Queen Lenore of the Red Desert and suprise surprise...I loved her too. I love her kindness and strength and her love for her people and I can't wait to learn more about her.

I also quickly wanted to talk about Davorin, the villain of the story. I loved his chapters because of the amount of political intrigue and further exploration of his character and his motivations. In his chapters we're also introduced to his sister and I hate that I don't remember her name anymore but I loved her so much. I also thought that the way Ravenna and Davorin's story lines were intertwined was cleverly done.

The ending of this book was pretty explosive and I did not see it coming at all. It ends on a buy cliffhanger that makes you want to pick up the sequel immediately. I might have already bought the second book and I can't wait to read it.

I'm just so grateful for Netgalley for putting this book on my radar because I wouldn't have known about it otherwise. This book is sooo underrated it hurts. I hope that this book gets the hype it deserves soon because it really was incredible.

One of the books I think everyone should read is THE ONE WHO COULD NOT FLY. It is a fantasy that has a YA feel and it’s so good.
A girl who wings too small to carry her is kidnapped by humans she didn’t know existed. Can she survive?

I began enjoying this story although the premise is a bit lacking in credibility - a lush tropical island off the coast of a desert mainland, the one populated by Sylphs (fairies, basically, but with feathered wings) and the other by savage humans, and never once have the humans come to the island until this single time when a handful of them arrive seemingly for the sole purpose of kidnapping Ravenna, the one special snowflake on the whole island?

Here's where Ravenna, supposedly a smart scholar, comes off as being stupid, because she could easily have stayed out of their way, or better yet, snuck back to her own people to warn them of this threat, but she does neither. Instead, she romps right into the middle of the camp when she thinks the humans are sleeping, sneaking around to spy on their stuff and is of course captured, whereupon the men simply haul up stakes and leave! It was like they were just waiting for her to arrive.

Naturally Ravenna is a myth come to life and fascinates everyone on the mainland, very nearly all of whom are consistently mean, brutal, and cruel, yet not a single one of these people thinks about going back to the island to see if there are more like her despite her being almost priceless. It made zero sense. It made no sense that no human had ever been to the island before - not in living memory anyway.

We're told Ravenna, as a Sylph, is a different species to humans, and the polar opposite, yet later we meet someone who is supposed to be a half-breed. How is this possible? The definition of a species is a group of living things which can breed within the group but not outside it. If she can breed with humans, she's human, or humans are Sylphs, one or the other. The thing about Ravenna though, as she's described, is that she is fully human. Apart from her wings, she's exactly like a human. She has breasts - and so is a mammal. She thinks like a human, acts like one, and she looks just like one - again, apart from the wings. There's nothing about her that seems alien or different, or otherworldly. That's a serious writing problem.

The wings are problematical too, and not just because they're stuck on - coming out of the middle of her back like an afterthought rather than a real appendage. I've discussed how little sense this makes in other reviews. Wings are limbs and so Ravenna is not a quadruped, but a hexapod (technically a sexaped if we're going to be linguistically correct, but hexapod wins for obvious reasons!) and there's nowhere back there for her wings to really attach!

But let's let that slide. The real problem with her wings is their variable size. We're told that Ravenna is different because she has undersized wings - too small and weak for her to fly with, yet later in the story we read, when she's riding a horse: "Her wings lay behind her on the horse's rump, both to keep them out of the way of the pounding hooves..." - if they're small and short, why would the hooves be a problem? This question is posed by the author herself indirectly when later we read, "Ravenna relaxed her wings and sat on the small stool." Now if she can relax and sit on a small stool without worrying about the wings trailing on the floor, then why were they a problem sitting on the horse? Was the horse shorter than a small stool?! Again it made no sense.

It makes less sense when Ravenna is trained as a gladiator, and she alternately sees her wings as a powerful fighting tool and a grave weakness. They can't be both. If the wings are strong enough to beat and knock someone over, then why can't she fly? Again the rules for her wings change - not just in how big they are, but in how strong they are. I continually got the impression that the author hadn't really thought this whole disabled Sylph' thing through, and the consequence of this was that the utility of the wings changed according to circumstance and that resulted in my repeatedly being kicked out of suspension of disbelief.

The book description, which admittedly the author has no control over unless they self-publish, has this: "Until, that is, Ravenna makes a single mistake. She falls." I don't know what that means. Maybe it comes later in the story than I could stand to read, but it makes little sense even in the blurb.

I didn't finish this because I became so disappointed in it: in the writing and the plot, and in Ravenna's complete lack of any sort of rebellious streak or even a spine to attach her wings to! The story sounded like it might be great; the execution of it not so much, and I began losing all interest in it when I reached the long, tedious, drawn-out portion that began right after she was kidnapped. There was far too long with far too little happening and it bored me to tears, especially since I'd already begun to lose interest in Ravenna as an engaging and strong female character. I can't commend this.

I really wanted to love this book. I saw it on netgalley and after requesting to read an advance copy, my request was granted.

I did not love this book, but I did like it. I like the idea of sylphs and winged creatures. I didn't really feel much for any of the characters though which kind of made me not really care of their dates throughout.

When I started reading it, I have to admit, during the opening scene, I almost put it down. I actually thought the grammar and writing was very poor, but strangely it was only like this for that first opening scene during the battle, then the writing got so much better that for a little while I was convinced that the beginning was written by someone else entirely.

As I said though, it gets much better and o was quickly drawn in. Quite fast paced once you get into it and well worth a read. I am looking forward to more titles by the author

thanks to netgalley and the publisher for providing me with the e-arc in exchange for an honest review.

i’m honestly disappointed because i expected more from this premise. it was not a bad book per se, but despite the fact that i’m a character-driven reader and enjoy the well-roundedness of characters above anything else, i just felt disconnected from them here because they weren’t solid or likable. i had a hard time trying to care for them and when i didn’t i just didn’t care for the story.

I had to DNF this about 50% of the way through, but I want to review this as to why I DNF'd.

The writing is not bad, in fact its rather good. I just found myself not liking any of the characters, but that's because I felt disconnected from the narrative. I kept having to re-read chapters to understand what was happening because there was a huge issue with pacing.

Overall, I did not enjoy this.