First of all, the cover was what first drew me in. They say "never judge a book by its cover". I say never underestimate the power of a pretty cover.
In this excerpt, we are introduced to Keralie. A scrappy, smart, crazy-skilled pickpocket. She steals something apparently really valuable from this boy, and said boy later goes looking for it. I'm already invested in them after those few pages I got to read. They both seem to have really interesting, complex, angsty backstories. The boy especially, since he's somewhat of a courier and delivering the thing Keralie stole from him is basically a matter of life and death.
We're also introduced to the four ruling queens of this fictional, fantastical world. And then, one of them gets murdered. Color me intrigued.
The writing flowed wonderfully. The context of the story was a bit hard to grasp at first, since, as readers, we are dumped into a fully developed world without a lick of information. It was a bit jarring. But since the writing is good, it's not hard to follow along and get acquainted with the world this book takes place in within a few dozen pages.
I'm not completely sold on the Queens' points of view though. They were mostly used as an info dump device. I would've rather learned it bit by bit as the story unraveled from Keralie's perspective.
I'm really curious to see how this will continue, though.
In this excerpt, we are introduced to Keralie. A scrappy, smart, crazy-skilled pickpocket. She steals something apparently really valuable from this boy, and said boy later goes looking for it. I'm already invested in them after those few pages I got to read. They both seem to have really interesting, complex, angsty backstories. The boy especially, since he's somewhat of a courier and delivering the thing Keralie stole from him is basically a matter of life and death.
We're also introduced to the four ruling queens of this fictional, fantastical world. And then, one of them gets murdered. Color me intrigued.
The writing flowed wonderfully. The context of the story was a bit hard to grasp at first, since, as readers, we are dumped into a fully developed world without a lick of information. It was a bit jarring. But since the writing is good, it's not hard to follow along and get acquainted with the world this book takes place in within a few dozen pages.
I'm not completely sold on the Queens' points of view though. They were mostly used as an info dump device. I would've rather learned it bit by bit as the story unraveled from Keralie's perspective.
I'm really curious to see how this will continue, though.