DNF at 25%.

I managed to finish 6 books since I started this one, but I had to force myself to come back to this time and time again, read about 10 pages, then loose interest again. I'm calling it quits because I haven't opened this book in 4 days and have no desire to come back to it again.

The sad part is - there is a good story in this book, but it's buried under mounds of useless minutiae that don't do anything to drive the plot forward. Case in point: the book opens with a strong sequence where our protagonist has a run-in with local guards, finds a dying man, and is entrusted with a dangerous artifact... And then we have 4 chapters following a completely different character in another part of the world, sitting through a long meeting discussing school reforms, study rotations, and rations. any tension that the first chapter had built is killed at the vine.

The other problem is that the characters are very lukewarm. I would have followed them if the book was more tightly written, but I don't feel like wading through pages upon pages of worldbuilding and often useless details just for the sake of these characters. I don't care enough about them. As I said, any high stakes that were set up in chapter one were lost by chapter 5 because the story just can't get started in earnest.

It's sad, because as I said, there is a good book somewhere in there, it would have benefited from another content editing session and a 200 pages cut.

PS: I received an advanced copy of this book via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

It was a little too long, but the characters were well written and the plot was engaging. I think the book is worth more attention