All of us bunking under the same roof meant secrets were hard to keep—unless your name was Kempthorne. He hoarded secrets like the rest of us hoarded the office pens.
This was a quick read that gave me a lot of mixed feelings. On one hand, I really liked the dark, action-inspiring settings with latents (magic users cnstantly on the cusp of becoming unstable) and artifacts (psychic energy-infused items that come into being when something awful happens, addictive to latent). The author wastes zero words on exposition, jumping straight into the plot, but all the important setting details are injected into the narrative at precisely the right times. So save for the first couple of chapters, I never felt lost—at least not on the things the MC didn't feel lost on.
I also loved the heavy atmosphere of secrets and lies. No one in this book knows how to be straightforward, everyone is either using others as pawns or including others into pushing their own agenda, and there are so many twists, including a big bombshell at the end that will probably make me pick up book 2, after all.
My problem, however, were the characters. I'm very character-oriented as a reader; I can overlook a lot of flaws if the characters hook me and keep me invested in their stories and the workings of their minds. This just didn't happen here. Dom, the MC, seemed like someone who had all the traits and circumstances to get me interested, but something was continuously off. Maybe the focus shifted to the action or yet another intrigue every time I thought I was getting to know him as a person? Something like that.
Kempthorne and Kage were both intriguing, but less as personalities and more as... plot devices? I wanted to know what they know, and where they come from, and what hidden agendas they're concealing, but not really *why* they were acting the way they were. I only wondered why when I consciously remembered to. The questions didn't tug on my emotions, if that makes sense. I wouldn't say the characters are badly written, but it seems that *how* they're written isn't my cup of tea? Which is a bit frustrating, because much like Dom, many other characters do have all the details to make them my favorites. The details just don't fit together into an intriguing whole. I guess that's the difference between plot-centric and character-centric writing? :)
I must admit I was also frustrated by the love triangle—I'm only ever a fan of those if all three characters have chemistry and if the situation at least *looks* like it might be fixed with a poly solution. This wasn't the case here, and both relationship options looked equally problematic. I wouldn't be *so* frustrated if I picked this book up expecting pure UF but with a queer lead, which it's closest to, but it was recommended to me as an UF romance, and it's just not that.
Anyway, the plot and the woldbuilding have me intrigued enough to try and continue the series at some point. Maybe the characters will grow on me, too! The book 2 snippet at the back of the book actually made me feel for Dom more than the entire first novel, so here's hoping.
