I admit, this is the first book I've read in the genre of teen fantasy and that's because I wanted to find out what happened before the author's most popular book "Six of Crows". And even though I liked the book then, but now I understand how average it was.
Lore
There are Grisha, they have magic and most of them serve in the army. There is a Shadow Fold, which is dangerous to cross because of the monsters living in it Volcra.
This is one of the advantages of the book. It may be a bit corny, but the author reveals it quite well. She tells you everything you need to know about him, talks in detail about some rules of her world, and there is no feeling of understatement.
Plot
Utterly banal. Alina Starkova turns out to be Grisha, who knows how to control light, and this is the weakness of the local monsters, and she is sent to study at the Grisha military camp (or whatever it was called).
This book has the same problem as the other first installments in the fantasy books. At some point, the plot begins to stagnation. After Alina gets to the Grishas, everything becomes very boring. Each chapter simply describes how she wakes up, learns, and then the chapter ends. And so it is every time. And it takes about 7 chapters, they are not small, they take about 17-20 pages. But after chapter 14, things get interesting again. I won't spoiler, but it turned out to be quite an atmospheric adventure.
Characters
They are quite ordinary. Alina Starkova turned out to be a rather boring heroine. I will not call her Mary Sue, because she did not manage to train and control her strength very easily, but this is the only thing that distinguishes her from other boring heroines. There is nothing to say about Malyan, because he was absent for most of the book. The Darkling turned out to be the most interesting, because he is charismatic, and the rest is spoilers about him.
Although Zoya is an interesting character, and this is not because she is an interesting character here (here she is a typical rival), but because later the author will reveal her in another series of books.
Text
Here's another plus, I liked the way she writes. With her beautiful descriptions, she immerses in the atmosphere of her book.
The book is very ordinary, although when I read it for the first time I liked it. Probably because of this, I still have warm feelings for her.
by mystery5009