3.25⭐

A fantasy story about finding a place in a society where the color of your eyes and skin makes you a non-citizen without all the rights at best and an enemy at worst. Perfect for horse lovers.

Thea was born with the mark of the Goddess of her country's enemies, leading her family to abandon her on the border. For that same reason, she has been saved by one such enemy. While some of her new people accept her, many still cannot see past her coloring and try to make her life difficult. Her adoptive father, the leader of the warrior elite of her tribe, offers her some protection. However, her only chance of becoming a citizen is by joining that elite group of warriors once she turns seventeen. However, joining them would mean fighting against those who share her blood, maybe even her relatives.

I really enjoyed that this fantasy, while including some amount of fighting, was focusing more on Thea's effort to integrate herself into society. It's society and its prejudices that became her enemy to fight rather than the looming threat behind the borders. One of the places she finds herself belonging to is horse training and horse racing, which was another big storyline in the book and something I didn't really see done before in fantasy to this extent.

While Thea is supposedly "the chosen one" being marked as someone with great magical power, the story of the first book is very personal and doesn't impact the whole country in a significant way. There was not much magic shown yet either. This left me unsure of what to think about the book. The whole time I wasn't sure where the story was going and even now I am not certain where the sequel will go. There might be a significant change of tone going forward. I would be fine with continuing the more personal story, but it seems like it will eventually evolve into a story encompassing both countries and their fates. If that is the case, then the first book might almost feel in retrospect like a prequel.

As for the characters, I enjoyed following Thea for the most part, although her young age sometimes made her behave rashly. I admired her tenacity and inner strength as she was faced with one challenge after another. The story involves a romance storyline, which was a bit divisive. On one hand, the two had chemistry, and I liked them together. On the other, I felt that the guy was quite pushy sometimes. I cheered Thea on when she was standing her ground against him, but then on some occasions she was told by the other characters that she was the one acting wrong. The resolution was satisfactory, though.

There is a strong trope of found family, both with her adoptive family and later with other friendly unbiased people she finds along the way. There were quite a few important side characters that were well-developed and with their own story.

As for the prose, I could feel the inexperience of the author, especially in the beginning. There were occasional missing commas and instances of unnecessarily complex vocabulary. However, I didn't have any significant issues and I am sure it will only improve going forward.

All in all, I did enjoy this book quite a bit and for a debut, it is well written. It managed to keep me interested and had some surprising developments along the way. I can recommend it to people who like to read something a bit different and more personal than most epic fantasies. I wouldn't call it a cozy fantasy, but rather something in between. I can especially recommend it to horse lovers.

I received an ARC for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

I found this to be a totally engaging story, with well developed characters.

This is a story of a orphaned baby girl, bought up in a tribe.

I cannot remember the last time I enjoyed a story so much.

Highly recommended in my opinion.

Absolutely enjoyed this book and the world building - it was a bit too much and overwhelming at times as there is a lot of information however once you get a gist of it, it becomes easier to understand and be immersed in. I would have enjoyed it all much more so had I known there was a glossary at the end that I could refer to - it would have helped with keeping it all straight.

Absolutely love horses so that kept me hooked, especially as it examined the bond between horses and humans.

Overall I highly recommend this book and I can hardly wait for the second book to be released.

TL;DR: Obsessed with Thea! And as a former horse girl you could not tear me away from this book. There was heavy worlbuilding that can be a little difficult to get through in the beginning but it set the series up great.

RATINGS: (out of 5)
Stars: 4
Spice: 1
Plot: 4
Characters: 4

Gems:
-Thea is AMAZING! I love her values and desire to put others above themselves. Even though it gets her into trouble time and time again
-The complicated family relationships were so intriguing to navigate, especially in the cultural setting that Crodia Pearson created in Iridesce
-If you love animals, especially if you were a horse person, this book is for you. It examines the relationship between human and animal with thoughtfulness and depth
-The book also makes you ponder what is stronger: time spent or blood relationships. After reading I don’t have an answer, but I am looking forward to carrying that line of questioning in to the next series.
-This book ends in a good place where you still want to read more but aren’t throwing the book across the table because the cliff hanger is vast


Opps:
-The prose was lengthy and overly difficult to follow at times. I feel that there could be editing to simplify the chapters. I like descriptive words, but they were abundant.
-I wish I knew about the glossary before I read the book because I was lost at times
-The middle of the book slows down a little but the first half is exceptional and the ending I could stop reading.
=Overall, I think this book would benefit from some more copyediting, but the foundation is there and I’m obsessed.

Readers who like these type of books might like this:
-High Fantasy
-Independent FMC
-Multiple love interests

While I appreciate the opportunity to read this, unfortunately I will not be finishing this book. I had a hard time with the writing style and couldn't get into as a result.

While I enjoyed the emotional depth of the story, and can appreciate the rich world Pearson has created, to me the prose felt purposefully complicated at times. Especially at the beginning of the book, I feel that I missed out on understanding quite a bit of what was going on because elements of the world were rapidly thrown at me with almost no context. During scenes where there was a lot of action taking place, I also found it tricky to keep track of what was happening.

This very well could have just been a dissonance between me and Pearson's style; as I said, despite it not being my favorite book, I can definitely see its merit! Anyone who enjoys high-fantasy with detailed world building and high emotional impact will love Iridesce!!

Two fathers, two countries and no place to call home. When your skin's the wrong color and eyes a hated shade of blue, life is one godsdamned battle after another.

Great characters, great world-building, I can't wait for more.

Once again the narration on this is fantastic. Cordia Pearson has me completely hooked with this incredible story and I can’t wait to see if there is more. It is so emotional and tragic but I just can’t seem to stop reading.

It was a beautiful story with a compelling main character. The only downside was there was a lot of over explanation at the beginning that I feel could have been spread out more to make it less of an info overload at the beginning.