Literally the only reason I persevered through this entire book was because I needed something with a ship on the cover to finish off the Readdun bingo. Otherwise, I would have absolutely DNF’ed.

Frankly, I think this book was done an enormous disservice by being marketed as an adult fantasy novel. Becaues it’s YA. Like, I don’t care how many f-bombs are dropped per chapter, it’s absolutely 100% YA. The very premise involves a bunch of characters—some of whom are literal teenagers and all of whom are acting like ones—going through a literal rite of passage, basically suspended between their adolescent lives and assuming the adult responsibilities that expect them. If there is a more quintessential young adult experience, I’ve yet to think of one. Oh, and Dee, the MC, does not actually have the special thing that makes others special, and is forced to live a lie thanks to his lying, cheating father, and he’s rebelling against it, and his very first appearance is focused on disobeying his Dad. And the book wants me to believe Dee is *checks* in his twenties. Hmm. As someone who just recently was on a contemporary YA kick, I can confidently say the only difference between him and the average fictional high school senior is that those fictional seniors are generally more mature and better capable of growth.

The worldbuilding is super simplistic, with the world divided into 12 districts… sorry, provinces who all play exactly one important part each in the empire’s structure. There used to be 13 of them, but the 13th district… sorry, province rebelled and was excluded and the empire’s now at war with it. On top of that, each province has a special animal associated with it and a unique anime-style hair color. The magic system is incredibly loose and vague and its rules keep changing based on… whatever the author thought would be cool for any given scene, probably. The worldbuilding overall is full of holes and underexplored opportunities. There’s one detail that I found interesting: the magic gift that marks the rulers in this setting literally passes from parents to children, as in, once a child gets it the parents doesn’t have it anymore and is eventually forced to abdicate in favor of the child. But the number of weird loopholes and inconsistencies about it all, as well as traditions/laws that make little sense when poked at, didn’t really let me enjoy it.

If all of the above was just a little bit better edited and marketed correctly, it could make for an entertaining YA romp, actually. One that would still have considerable flaws, though, such as an absent sense of setting. I think by combining modern world details with high fantasy, the author was going for something like Gideon the Ninth, but the result was… not it. Or there’s also the romantic plotline that simply made zero sense. Try as I might, I have no idea where those feelings came from.

Again, there absolutely is a decent YA novel hiding somewhere in the folds of this book. Dee’s sass is kind of fun, even when obnoxious. He started annoying me pretty early on, but somehow he never stopped being entertaining, so kudos for that. A lot of the other characters have great potentially, if only they got flashed out a little more. The setting has its cool elements, they just needed to be double-checked for consistency. The mystery isn’t badly constructed. But I don’t feel like there is anything here that would fit the expectations for an adult fantasy mystery, and I’m honestly just… baffled by this marketing choice.