Spoiler alert:

A really good book, but it loses a star and a half for me because she started out with such a bold concept, then kind of copped out a bit. She introduces us to two countries at war, who have been at war for so long that their culture and self-image is imbued with it, suddenly having a peace imposed on them by an outside group. Then she made that outside group utterly evil and practically inhuman. I wish she hadn't. The clash of cultures and mores was fascinating, and surely the third party could have been in some way threatening without making them complete bogeymen.

Read it anyway.

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Excellent book. Very intriguing. Kept me up late at night to finish it.

Book is about good and evil and how false peace can be worse then a war. Strong characters.

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It took a while to get into this world, but I liked the story and the strong female characters.

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Best book I have read in a long time. This author's writing was pure poetry to me. I laughed, I cried, I felt hope and great despair, I was lost and found and could not stop until I finished the book. Since it is over 500 pages that was a lot of hours of steady reading. The characters are strong and vibrant even if one was absolutely evil. Yes, Talyn was too close to this evil, but if under mind control, how does one resist. The ending was wonderful and completely unexpected, but as this is fantasy I see that as no complaint. Would that it be so easy to solve the dire problems in our own world.

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Holly's writing is deft, and I give her credit for taking some big risks with this story. The author pulls off the tricky 1st/3rd points of view.

But... Her heroine got too "up close and personal" with an over-the-top creep(big story risk). I want more emotional distance from the bad guys if they are into murdering their sex partners.

Also, I'm not sure the climax works. Societies shouldn't be that easy to fix.

But, I found her world a fun place to visit. Her magical system was intriguing and resonant. I would have liked to have seen more of it.

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Although it seemed to slow to a crawl for a short time in the very middle, the beginning and end were very captivating and I found this book refreshing. I enjoyed the author's writting style and the characters she created. I wish that she had taken more time to "flesh out" the background or motivation of Skirmig who is one of the three main characters. Overall, it was a new twist to an old storyline and I would recommend it to anyone who likes this genre.

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