Reviewed by Silvara on
“By now, I should have learned that luck, if she was a lady, was a mean-spirited bitch with a grudge against me.”
Some of this worked really well, and some of it just... didn't. For a lot of the book we don't know exactly how old Sabina is. She's half vampire, and half magic user. We know she went to school to train to be an assassin. So I figured she must be somewhere in her late 20's to mid-30's. Especially when she has some blonde moments.
Then we find out later that Sabina is actually in her 50's... Granted, there are a lot of surprises for her in a short amount of time. But someone that old, especially one who is supposed to be one of the best assassins around, shouldn't have had quite that many dropped balls.
I liked her, I just think that some of the things she did were unbelievable for her age and training, and just used to further bits of plot that could have been done differently. But this is a first book, so maybe she gets better in the next one?
I quite liked Adam, loved Giguhl and Vinca, and I can't wait to meet Maisie! Sabina's grandmother, as well as Clovis were done really well. There were a few moments where you weren't sure who was a bad guy and who was actually a good one. And the plot twists! Some of them I saw coming miles away, and others took me completely by surprise.
I liked how the magic was done, as well as some of the world-building lore. (Though some of it needed explaining sooner than actually happened. Like the applewood.) Some things were explained right away, like being able to tell the relative age of a vampire by the shade of their hair. All vampires have red hair, the lighter it is, the younger the vampire. Sabina has red and black hair since she's half and half.
Overall, it wasn't bad, it just could have been done better in regards to Sabina herself. I already own the 2nd book, so hopefully the things that irked me a bit in this book will be better in the next one.
This review was originally posted on Fantasy of the Silver Dragon
Reading updates
- Started reading
- 4 April, 2016: Finished reading
- 4 April, 2016: Reviewed