I keep seeing new books published by this author, and they usually mention the Birdverse. I'm honestly not sure if this was the right book to start with—it's not the first one, but it's unclear to me if the books need to be read in order. I did think the way the worldbuilding was handled felt a bit clunky, so maybe there is a clear first book and I just didn't know it.

The magic system is really interesting, and the story focused a lot on self-discovery, which was nice to see. But a large component of this is also the romance between the two main characters, and I just didn't buy into it. It was very insta-love, and it pulled focus away from the very real disaster looming on the horizon. On the one hand there was a lot of urgency to find a solution, but then there would be the distraction of jealous exes, and a couple that doesn't know what they want from each other and is trying to figure it out. The character interactions often felt stilted for this reason.

I didn't enjoy the writing enough to read more books in the series, but I would recommend it if you're interested in queernorm fantasy worlds.