LAST OF THE TALONS was an action-packed and bold adventure that takes us into a world filled with tricky demons, handsome immortal princes, and ruthless gangs. I really loved watching Shin Lina got through this book. She's one of those hardened and prickly female MCs with a hard exterior that makes her absolutely ruthless in protecting those she cares about. In fact, Kim does a great job with all the morally grey characters in this one (which is pretty much all of them, but I digress). Honestly that made her more endearing for me and made it so that I had to cheer her on. And the way that the traumas of Lina's past are handled? Perfection. I also ADORED Prince Rui and his mischievousness and the way that Lina's feelings and relationship with him progress throughout the novel. Their dynamic reminded me of Jude and Cardan in THE CRUEL PRINCE which is a compliment of the highest order. The pacing in this one is phenomenal and the fast pace really helped me enjoy it more. Kim's take on Korean mythology is unique and unlike anything I have seen before. The whole book has a really whimsical yet sharp tone to it that I couldn't get enough of. Truly, if you love books like THE CRUEL PRINCE and WICKED FOX you will love LAST OF THE TALONS. Definitely an underrated book that needs to be talked about more because of how great it is!

This a solid fantasy debut! I loved how the past and present were woven to tell both stories, and given the minimum formatting for an advanced e-copy, I found I appreciated the use of past and present tenses so I was signaled which timeline I was in.

While the YA market has seen many assassins come and go, Lina's story is certainly one that will land in the hands of more mature teens. The violence in this book, while not overdone, is vivid, and with content that gleefully takes part of murder and vengeance while also delving into gang violence and addiction, I would certainly age this for the older teen reader.

As for the romance, this book will certainly bring glee to the Enemies to Lovers crowd. The game of cat and mouse played out by Lina and Rui lands in the realms of both shadow and light. Neither are truly good, but neither are truly bad, made up of both humanity and monstrosity. I thoroughly enjoyed seeing it play out, and I think those two were very strongly developed characters.

In summary, this was an enjoyable read and I certainly look forward to its sequel after the elements that came to light by the end of this installment!

While this novel gave me Six of Crows, Throne of Glass, and Beauty and the Beast vibes, it excels at standing apart with the incorporation of Korean mythology and made me want to learn even more about Korean culture and myths. The story started off slowly and I felt the second half of the book was much stronger than the first. The political intrigue added to the plot and definitely had me on edge when certain things happened. Lina was an intense character who had to work through a lot, and learning about her through intermittent flashbacks helped me understand her more fully. Her love for her sister was unmatched. The Dokkaebi were fascinating and I honestly would have loved to know more about them. I love the enemies to lovers trope, but I think the developments between Lina and Rui could have been explored more. The deadline put in place forced their relationship to move at an accelerated pace, so I understand the need to move things along quickly, but I wish the burn had been slower. Their banter was fun though, especially when Lina was so fierce. Rui’s powers were enchanting and mesmerizing and I hope we get to see more of them in the future. The last few chapters and revelations really excited me and I will most definitely be picking up the next book to see what happens!! Though some of the main plot points were wrapped up, the ending left us with SO many questions, so be aware of that when you read this.

Like other YA books I’ve read recently, there were some very dark themes in this one. I would not give this to a young teen, but might recommend it to older teens with warnings.

Content warnings: murder, violence, smoking, addiction, loss of loved ones, and profanity

Review: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
This story is roughly based on Korean Mythology. In the “Author’s Note” section in the beginning of the book, the author states:
“The Kingdom of Sunpo and the hidden realm of Gyeulcheon are entirely fictional, but the mythology within both stems from centuries of Korean history and tradition (with the exception, of course, being the Pied Piper element of this novel. That original fairy tale originates from the German town of Hamelin).”

It was interesting to see the author’s retelling of these Korean Mythology characters. Not knowing much about Korean Mythology, I did look up a few characters (specifically the Dokkaebi). Most of what I read described the Dokkaebi as “goblins”, so they aren’t necessarily humanoid, which was a major change in this retelling as was the use of the Pied Piper, which is a German tale, in a Korean themed retelling.

The author did an amazing job painting a picture of a broken and crime ridden land and the beautiful dream realm of the Dokkaebi.

The narrative goes back and forth from the present day to flashbacks of what happened to the Talons a year prior.

All of Shin Lin’s actions are fueled by the need to protect her younger sister; she will do anything to keep her safe when her life is threatened by the rival gang.

The story is a mix of enemies to lovers, rival gangs, assassinations, heists, rebellion, death, found family, lost family, battles, and mystical monsters. It sort of gave me Six of Crows feelings with an Asian twist.

It’s an upper YA story. The violence and sexual tension might not be appropriate for middle grade.

I really enjoyed this story and look forward to book 2.

I was in the mood for a fantasy read, which doesn't happen often, and this was a great pick! It's such a fun, entertaining read, and I loved the enemies to lovers romance, which genuinely goes from attempting to kill the other to developing Feelings. I will say though, where the beginning pulled me in immediately, I felt like not a whole lot happened in the middle part of the book. The ending definitely made up for that, though!

6 stars.

I absolutely loved this book!
Lina is so deliciously sassy.
Rui is devastatingly disarming.
I love how we come to love the Talons, that they’re just as much a part of the story as Chan et. al are.
I love how real Lina’s pain and grief is and how real that makes the story, how it grounds it.
I love the twists and turns, the romance and the action.
This book was just perfect and I can’t wait for the next book!

WOOOOOOWWW! When I tell you that this book is enemies to lovers I'm it's ENEMIES TO LOVERS!!! Lina is a total badass! Her journey to becoming an assassin is WOAH! I can't believe what this girl is capable of to keep her little sister safe! RESPECT! TOTAL BADASS! And let me not talk about Rui or we will be here all day!😂

Thank You Entangled Teen for the eARC!!!

(4.25/5) THIS BOOK!!!! While it started a bit slow for me, once I hit 25%, I didn’t want to put it down. It has all the best things: badass female warrior assassin, “I came here to kill you but now I have feelings for you”, Korean mythology, chaotic banter, found family that will BRING YOU TO TEARS, and the one I didn’t know I needed: ONLY ONE HORSE. The way things came together at the end of the book… I NEED the sequel and the first book only comes out tomorrow! 😫

This book had me wishing that I didn’t need gainful employment to earn money to support my book buying habit because all I wanted to do during work today was finish the book. 😤

They are gone. All of them are dead and it is her fault. She is the last Talon, the most feared assassin in the land, yet here she is serving under the rival gang that killed all of her family. Shin Lina has nowhere to turn. So, when she is asked to steal a precious tapestry from a temple, she does it. Little did she know that this tapestry belongs to the legendary Pied Piper, who is anything but forgiving. Her whole world is endangered when her crime boss is whisked away by the Pied Piper, and she is threatened with the death of her little sister if she is unable to return him in time. Shin Lina could care less if her boss ever is returned but she will not have her sister’s life threatened. When trying to get to her sister before others would cause her harm, she is whisked away to the Pied Pipers realm and given the chance to play a game. Kill the Pied Piper by the end of the 14th day or he will kill her. Can Shin Lina find away to kill a god? Or is the end of Talons?
This is an interesting book. I honestly didn’t realize that the Pied Piper was part of Asian culture. I love books that use a cultures myths or legends and allow readers see what role they play within their culture. This book is fast paced, though I was expecting a few more attempts on killing Rui. If I was an assassin I would have tried at least once a day. While she did get “punishments” for each failed attempt, they really were not horrid of punishments, so really a couple more attempts I fell might have been warranted. While we all know what the end of this book will be overall, I think the journey there is just such a fun one. I also loved Lina’s fate for her crime boss. Hopefully this means that maybe her tale is not done.

Thank you so very much Entangled Publishing LLC and Netgalley for allowing me to read an advance copy of this title.

This was... so cringey :( I wanted to like this so bad because 1) the cover is so pretty and 2) supposedly bad-ass female main character ALL MIXED WITH MAGIC!! Instead, I hated all the characters, found myself rolling my eyes at too many choices our main girl made, and was just overall unimpressed. If I have to hear the phrase "godsdamned" one more time, I'm going to give up on reading YA fantasy books altogether. And the phrase of endearment (if it can even be called that) "little thief" had me rolling my eyes every single time it was uttered. It feels like something someone would call their young child, not their romantic pursuit.

Not a fan, and probably will not read the second if another comes out (I still give it 2 stars rather than 1 because I read another book in the same week that was worse and gave me some perspective).

<i>Last of the Talons</i> was an enriching fantasy with roots in a culture I admire. The world-building was new, unique, and intriguing and kept me guessing and wanting to learn more.

The main character seemed to follow the formulaic YA-Fantasy heroine, erring on the darker side as she is an infamous assassin in this story, no stranger to driving a dagger in someone's heart. Her world is surrounded by death, and I struggled to connect with the plausibility of a character being so young being so dangerous. Everything she does is to protect her sister, a sister who we do not fully meet until the end of the story, as such I found their sisterly connection hard to accept in the narrative.

It isn't until the Pied Piper arrives on the scene and turns her world upside down that I started to really enjoy the story and wonder how things would play out when our MC is tasked with killing him in order to secure her freedom and her sister's protection. I thought for sure her play for the final kill wouldn't be until later in the book, and much to my surprise, her attempt came much sooner than expected. Needless to say, I expected the plot to unfold one way, and found it unfolded in another, pleasing way. I really enjoyed the connection they built together over the course of the story and how each learned to put aside their pasts in search of new beginnings.

Told in alternate timelines as Shin Lina is forced to go to the Dokkaebi kingdom on a mission. Told in this immortals land and on the past of how she got into this position.

She's already lost so much but she could lose more. The emperor and her have an agreement but he seems to be toying with her. Their mutual attraction and blood lust is warring against each other.

This is an enemies to lovers fantasy adventure told with Korean mythology.

I googled Dokkaebi and I recognize the images they were goblins- nature deities or spirits possessing extraordinary powers and abilities


Thank you entangledteen and netgalley for the e-ARC for my honest and voluntary review.

(Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with the free ARC of this book!)

Every step Shin Lina takes in life is decided by someone else, but if there's any mistake in the calculation, that misstep is hers to take responsibility for. It's easy for her to throw herself in the near-death situations - after all, that's where she danced all her life. So, when the Dokkaebi shows up at the rooftop, the game doesn't change, the stakes just get higher.
This book literally glued me to my seat! I loved every bit of it! It's been a while since I've read a book with this much chemistry between the MCs.
Enemies to lovers, Korean mythology, amazing story building and backstories, the mixture of teasing, adrenaline, power and pain, all in this gem of a book. Go get it, immediately!

Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for provinding me with an ARC of this book in exchange of a honest review.

Last of the Talons is an enjoyable fantasy read with a morally grey heroine (my favourite ones), a deadly task and enemies to lovers romance. The world building is the strongest part of this book: the author paints a vivid picture of all realms the heroine visits, and the history of the world really entrapted me. I really hope that the author will expand this world even more in the sequel! I also adored that the mythology is based on the Korean one - it led me to some amazing wikipedia page binges!!

While the romantic chemistry was enjoyable, I wasn't a massive fan of the pacing of it. Looking at the books timeline it felt a bit rushed, but hopefully we will see more development in the other book. I will definetly pick it up and go back to this amazing world

Last of the Talons is genuinely a fun book; it's intriguing, has some great descriptions and I loved reading about the Korean mythology included in the book to set up the worldbuilding!

Unfortunately, it also reads as all show and no telling. We're told Shin Lina is a skilled assassin and that she has to outsmart the Dokkabebi emperor but there are literally no important stakes here or evident instances to sell Lina's cleverness and ruthlessness. It felt like the author was trying too hard to set characteristics but could only deliver basic tropes. Besides, there are a lot of plot related inconsistencies and jarring switches to the past timeline, all of which combined made the book fall flat for me. I wasn't invested in the story as much as I wanted it to be, which is sad because if this book was a little more polished I would've thoroughly enjoyed it.

This was a really interesting read, and not what I expected!

In the beginning I struggled to get into this, but once it picked up I had a really good time. This had such meaningful commentary on things like grief, and I actually really liked the romance in this! Which is rare for me. The characters were interesting and unique and I felt they were well developed.

I do have to say... the use of "purr" as a dialogue descriptor was not my favorite.

The mythology, the magic, the plot, the characters, etc. were all excellent! Apart from a few minor gripes, I really enjoyed this.

LAST OF THE TALONS is a book soaked in Korean folklore about an assassin who finds herself stuck in a game with an immortal - kill him or be killed herself.

There's a lot of action packed into this book, starting off with a heist. I like heists so this was the perfect start for me - hints of the creatures in the world building, a sense of history, and also stealing a precious tapestry.

The book is sort of told over two timelines, with the bulk of the book taken up by the present timeline of her in the other realm trying to kill Rui. However, interspersed are flashbacks to the events leading up to Lina joining her current gang. You know from the start it was not her choice and that her old gang, her family, were killed, but you don't know exactly how or why. The information is revealed slowly over the book, building up a picture of her past.

Lina explores the pocket realm the immortals are trapped in, and it was interesting to read about the consequences of forcing a bunch of people used to roaming into one place, the way lives changed. To humans like Lina, the realm is mystical and magical (and terrifying), but there are some very mundane structural issues that are found in her home too. Usually it's the humans who end up at the bottom of the pile, with the immortals at the top, but when there are few humans, what happens?

This is the start of a series (duology?) and while there are definitely things that need to be resolved in the next book, this one comes to a really nice conclusion without a cliffhanger.

I went into this book solely because of the Korean folklore. After watching my fair share of K-dramas, I was familiar with some of the myths that were retold here, but the book expanded more on Goblins and their powers that was new and utterly compelling.
Any book that opens with a heist is up to a great start. Our 18 yr old, Shin Lina, is tasked with stealing a tapestry for her boss, Kamlin. A piece of cloth that would cast her into months of misery and deadly games.

Lina was the sole survivor of Talons. We get to know more about them as we read the book. She misses the others and wants the group back, but they only visit her in dreams and their memories haunt her at every turn. She suffers from a trauma that leaves her wounds raw, wide open, taking time to heal. She really struggles with it for the most part of the book.

Things looked grim for her until she stepped into the hidden realm of Gyeulcheon (the made-up world of the goblins). The Goblin Emperor, Rui, whisks her to his land because she stole his precious tapestry, so she has to pay for her crimes. He's weirdly obsessed with Lina not in a creepy way. But he is interested in her from the go. It makes me think that he has different motives to approach her.

Lina and Rui end up making a deal that was ridiculous in the first place. She had to kill him before 14 days, or he would kill her. The fun part was reading about her failed attempts at killing him. He had a knack to escape death. Readers who love daggers-to-the-throat trope will enjoy this story. I sure did.

Read this book if you like Korean mythology or watching periodical fantasy K-dramas. I can assure you it’s worth your time. I can’t wait to see where this story is headed next.

A beautiful cover, but I didn't love what was on the inside sadly. It felt like it dragged on a LOT, and I was having to skim read to get through it.

Our main character, Shin Lina, is supposedly a ruthless assassin known as The Reaper, but we were never shown this - it was a lot of telling and not showing. We are constantly told how she maimed, she assaulted, she killed, how everyone in the city feared her - but I just didn't find that believable for a second. There was no example or proof that this was ever the case. Also, despite her being such a highly skilled assassin, as soon as going for a full frontal stabbing assault on the Emperor didn't work, rather than finding a more creative, crafty, sneaky way to kill him, she goes for seduction instead. It just felt very invalidating and reductive when we're constantly being told how amazing she is at killing people. I also felt confused because she became a member of her gang only 3 years ago, and yet she is more skilled than any of them who have been training for a lot longer than her, to the point where she is the only one capable of protecting any of them? I didn't feel any chemistry between her and the love interest, and pretty much all the characters fell flat.

I loved the inclusion of Korean mythology and more books need to be written about it, but this one just did not work. A lot of this book just didn't make sense, and I think it needs more development and fleshing out

An enjoyable read with an enemies-to-lovers vibe. I wish I had this Korean mythology-inspired fantasy when I was growing up, but I'm so happy young and older readers alike will see their culture reflected in the books they read. I'll admit it did take me a bit to get into this. I read the first couple of chapters but ended up putting the book down and then picking it back up again from the beginning a few days later. I wasn't quite in the right mindset for it when I initially began.

I could have done with a few less "vulgar/cruel gestures" only because due to Sarah J. Maas's THRONE OF GLASS series, I'm forever turned off by that phrase because it was so overused. I did find a few overused words in this book as well but nothing to really distract me from the story as a whole. The world-building is good, especially in terms of the Korean gods and goddesses. The writing itself is also good and you wouldn't think this is a debut novel. It's hard-hitting, really gritty, and there's blood and death all around.

The main character, Shin Lina, is dealing with so much as well. There's a lot of tension between her and Hanuel Rui, the emperor, and internal struggle and guilt within her regarding the old gang, the Talons, and her younger sister, Eunbi. The entire idea of the "game" sort of fell to the backburner and was just mentioned in passing as the chapters progressed. I don't think the two seem to take it seriously later.

For a hot minute there I thought we would be left wanting in regards to the reason why Shin Lina is actually in this realm of Dokkaebi but we got some answers. How Lina has transformed throughout the book is gone well, which makes me all the more eager and interested to read the next book in the series because I know she and Rui will just kick ass, lol. Their romance definitely fits the enemies-to-lovers trope, and I liked it, especially since all they wanted to do is kill each other but also seemed to have a lot of fun with it. Give me more of these two walking in moonlit gardens at night, please.