Ultimately I just didn't care.
I think my biggest problem was with how the world was explained. The entire plot is built on this story about the gods. But this story was dumped on us in one sitting when the MC stumbled upon a woman telling the story to her kids (as like a bedtime story). The whole thing was just dumped in our laps.
- I couldn't absorb it.
- It was too much info at once.
- We were dealing with like four gods' names and kings names and I just couldn't remember any of them.
... but then they all became important later.
And although we were dumped with too much information about the gods and that history, we weren't really given enough information about the CURRENT stuff. It took me a long time to fully piece together what the king was all about and the CURRENT state of the kingdom. I don't feel like the whole world building was unravelled very well. The pacing didn't work, and we either got too much at once or not enough.
My second big problem was the romance. I started out totally rooting for it. You can still see my status update at 13%:
"Please fall in love."
I was ALL FOR IT!
But then I lost my love for the MC. I decided she was too whiny and I stopped liking her.
Then I lost my love for the love interest. I was excited about him at first, but then his personality just... never developed? He was so... boring? There was just nothing about him that excited me.
Also the blind hated in this book just didn't do it for me. I'm not necessarily blaming the book for this since this kind of stuff totally happens in real life. So yes, it was realistic. But that doesn't mean I have to like reading about it.
Basically there are "frostbloods" who can wield ice/frost/coldness/whatevs.
Then there are "firebloods" who can wield fire/heat.
They're both exactly the same, just different elements. They're both potentially useful and potentially dangerous.
And yet EVERYONE in this whole damn book worships frostbloods because they are apparently awesome, but hates the MC on sight because she's a "disgusting dangerous fireblood". They literally call for her death because they assume she's all evil and horrible.
I just thought it was ridiculous how you have two kinds of people who are exactly the same except for which element they can wield, and yet the entire kingdom blindly loves one of them and hates the other.
Yeah this totally exists in real life with racism, but as I said.. It just kind of made me hate everyone for being so judgemental and I think that affected my overall enjoyment.
=================
Writing this review out makes it look like I hated the book, but I didn't. In the end I actually feel quite indifferent. There are things I didn't like, yeah. But ultimately I just don't really care strongly one way or another.
Honestly there are interesting elements to this story in theory. Something about it just didn't click with me and instead of enjoying all those pieces that I feel like I shouldn't have liked, I just couldn't bring myself to really get invested at all.