This was my second Joy Slaughter novel. I was introduced to her books with Crossing the Line, which was clearly well written, but for which I was obviously not the target audience. When I learned that she was writing a fantasy novel, I was immediately stoked to read it. Unsurprisingly, I loved it!

Norinian Uprising is a wonderful mix of epic adventure, complicated characters with beautiful and messy relationships, and socio-political drama, with a healthy dose of pirates and witches! There are a lot of story lines, which I was concerned might get convoluted, but Joy does an excellent job of connecting the dots that need connecting while still keeping the veil of mystery over the things she wants to save for later. I also thought that despite the vast array of characters, each one was fully fleshed out with clear motivations and desires. One of Joy's great strengths as an author is character creation. She is fabulously good at creating flawed heroes, villains who you can't quite get yourself to hate, and a frustrating number of characters who don't clearly fall on one side or the other.

Overall, the novel made me laugh out loud, hang to the edge of my seat, ugly cry, and then curse the author for not having yet written the next installment. I truly can't wait for the rest of this series!