I like a bit more magic from books about magic users. This has a nice romance plot with political shenanigans, suitable for YA I think. The Primes - the heavy hitters with the magic powers - do almost nothing in this book except look at DNA to determine who's who. Josetta is nice enough but there's not a lot to her, and Rafe seems to spend an awful lot of time with major injuries. I didn't believe in the bizarre rules of succession in the neighboring kingdom; they do not seem workable for more than one, maybe two generations. I don't understand why the whole blessing thing surrounding Rafe was so odd. No spoilers, but - even considering his heritage, why does he pull only ghost blessings? What makes him so incredibly extraordinary that Josetta pulls the blessings she does? Just being an experimental pilot doesn't seem to cover it, and while I liked that subplot quite a bit, he isn't that good. Unless Shinn is setting him up for a major role in an upcoming book, that didn't make sense to me. Anyway - I did like it, it's a nice fast read, I like the universe Shinn has created, but at the end of this one I was left with "that's all?".

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