*I received an eARC via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.*

Billed as "space opera filled with sapphic romance, space pirates, a blind witch and powerful priestesses," I was expecting a lot out of this book and unfortunately despite having so many of my buzzwords I didn't love this book. I was expecting more of a The First Sister vibe and instead I got a Some Desperate Glory vibe. Though in saying that, I seem to be in the minority of people who didn't like Some Desperate Glory, so maybe this would work better for others.

I think this world is really interesting, though it's definitely falls into the Star Wars-esque genre of space fantasy. There are blood witches, old gods, pirates, an evil big bad, a blind main character and a sapphic romance. It's fast paced and full of action. There is a lot to love on the surface. I love the concept of exploring the way foundational myths create a society, as each of the three main religions we see in this world have the same/similar history but have gone in much different directions.

Unfortunately, I found myself losing interest pretty early on. I tend to be a world and/or character driven reader. If one or both of those things are done well, then I will be hooked nine times out of ten. While I do think the world is interesting, there was a lot about it that didn't make sense or felt hand-wavey, and while sometimes that works for me, here it started to grate, especially as some of the plot points became repetitive. I also found that I had a hard time distinguishing between the voices of the main characters. Korinna is the most fleshed out, but even her character felt fairly one dimensional. I loved that we got blind representation and it seemed to be well done to me; however, I struggled to buy into her which made it hard to buy into the book as a whole.

Overall I think Mooring had some really interesting ideas here, but to me it felt like a lot of aesthetics/vibes and not enough meat, which made the execution fall flat.