I wanted to love this book because the concept was so strong, and the opening pulled me in super fast. Unfortunately, it fell victim to the classic romantasy flaw of being unable to juggle the plot and the romance and it ended up fumbling both. The pacing fluctuated too much between the slow character moments needed to build a romance and skipping forward in time to wrap up the overarching plot at a breakneck pace. The character work also relied too much on telling rather than showing. I really respect what the author was doing and the story they wrote, but the execution left me a little unsatisfied.