I just cant with this one anymore. It is not what I was looking for.

This is more of a relationships book. There is alot about friendships, romances, and massaging. Scant few things about the war, the backstories, battles, fantasy elements. All of these are in service to the relationships. And sometimes clumsily so. But I just was not looking for this sort of thing.

I wanted more about the gryphons, and there is a good bit here. I wanted more of them flying, how their biology works. How they exist as magically-created beings. There was -some- good stuff on that. But so few and far between, or at least not making up for more meh parts of the book. And it always returned to the chars I was not interested in.

Not to mention the iffy stuff on the breeding program, and maybe some eugenic justification? Maybe it addresses that in the last 25%, but I couldnt get there. But what got me the most was the made up terms. Not a bad thing in-general. But here, these terms are not defined well or at all. I couldnt tell if a made up word was a job, an ethnicity, another species. And they are used all over the book. And I just felt left behind and confused. And I got tired of it.

From what I read, I would give it 3 out of 5 stars. Teeeeempted to give it 2.5.