What made this book stand out for me is the really creative worldbuilding and complex characters.
There are elements in there from 100 stories I've read before, but Mae somehow manages to take what I consider to be cliched plot points and gives them new life. Everything from the love triangle to the clumsy ingenue that turns out to be extraordinary are usually things that make me stop reading, however, they were part of the things that kept me reading because Mae uses the tropes with complex and surprising characters that I found myself wanting to see through to the end of the story.
It's not groundbreaking or lifechanging, but it is definitely an extremely engaging read that surprised me a couple of times and sets up the world for what is likely to be an expanding world full of new revelations.
There are elements in there from 100 stories I've read before, but Mae somehow manages to take what I consider to be cliched plot points and gives them new life. Everything from the love triangle to the clumsy ingenue that turns out to be extraordinary are usually things that make me stop reading, however, they were part of the things that kept me reading because Mae uses the tropes with complex and surprising characters that I found myself wanting to see through to the end of the story.
It's not groundbreaking or lifechanging, but it is definitely an extremely engaging read that surprised me a couple of times and sets up the world for what is likely to be an expanding world full of new revelations.