I think I took this book too seriously when reading it, yet it brings up serious topics like enslavement, imperialism, war, and liberation as genuine character motivations. I won’t say it wrote about these topics carelessly, but it was done so casually that as a reader I felt it was hard to respect most of the characters in their relation to them. Romance is also present in this book (and tbh I expected so much more of it than there was), but felt misplaced and out of place with the plot. As a stand alone book I wouldn’t rate this too high, however there are sequel books to this that are well received and highly recommend to my demographic of young women. That being said, I don’t feel compelled to seek out those sequels to get the complete story. A quick, somewhat fun read but overall pretty generic for its genre.