I received this book from NetGalley for review.

 

Admittedly, I've had a rough time with some of the Historical Fantasy I've picked up this year. But this one was so much fun to read. 

Leonora was a great character, early on I wasn't entirely sure of some of her motivations. We're thrown into so much action very early on, two separate large events, then a lot of downtime where Leonora is recovering and it doesn't feel like a lot is happening because of how much action started the book. The "downtime" is filled in with what is best described as political intrigue. Leonora is not very good at it though, and just keeps making more problems for herself because she's a little bull-headed. She's better at physical fighting than she is at politics. It doesn't help that because of her mixed heritage nobody at court seems to trust her. 

The romance, while it's only in the last maybe 30% of the book, lacked the chemistry for me to find it believable. I like them separately as characters, but as a pairing, it felt as if it came out of nowhere. I think Leonora needed friends and allies more than she needed a romantic partner. Everything else about their relationship could stay the same, just remove all romantic connotations and it would still work. As I say and will keep saying platonic affection is real and shouldn't be ignored.

There is a mid-way point to this book where the magic starts to take up more of the plot, and while I didn't hate it, the book also felt like it stopped being about preventing the Spanish invaders from taking more land, and about preventing or subverting this mysterious prophecy. And for me, that kind of started to lose me a little with the plot. I still enjoyed every minute of it because I love reading all kinds of mythology. And learning about the culture through these characters was very engaging and interesting, the plot got muddled for me. Even the defeat of the Spanish antagonists felt a little underwhelming because of this. 

I am very interested in reading what's next for this series, I'm not sure how many books it's going to be, but I look forward to reading them regardless.