I do love this series! Loved it as an adolescent, and still love it today. It's not perfect - there are bits of archaic phrases where I think Pierce is too self-consciously writing Fantasy with a capital F - but for sheer beauty of imagery it beats out nearly every other fantasy setting I've ever read. The world is so lush and beautiful and imaginative...

I also really appreciate the relationship (or lack thereof) between Aerial and Irrylath. So often in fantasy, the rescued princess is the love interest. It's almost taken as read, that she's there as a reward for heroic behaviour. But here the prince is rescued and in this book it becomes clear not only that his captivity has left him with an enormous amount of trauma, but that he is in no way a reward and absolutely refuses to be a love interest. It doesn't matter that she rescues him, it doesn't matter that she returns him to his family. It doesn't even matter that she loves him, because he doesn't love her and that's the end of it. I'm not nearly as interested in Irrylath as I am in, well, any other character, but he's there on his own journey, a person and not a prize, with his own story and his own agency and that is really refreshing to read, even gender-flipped from the usual script as the story is.