"Greed may do your bidding, but death serves no man."

i would like to start this review by issuing a formal apology to all of my friends that have been begging me to read this book for the last six or seven years. i'm sorry.

i'm not a big fantasy reader, especially this type of fantasy. but good lord. i am so emotionally invested and attached to these characters. i picked up this book a couple years ago, skimmed the first few pages, and put it back down because i wasn't interested.

past me must've been praying on future me's downfall. if i had read just a couple more pages i would've been hooked. this book was good. really, really, really fucking good.

i wouldn't say this is the best book i've ever read in my life, but the way the characters are written is so personal. you're able to form a bond with each and every one of them. you ache to learn more about their pasts, and you're dying to read about their futures.

the writing flows so nicely that it's almost as if you aren't even reading, and there wasn't a single moment where i paused in boredom.

genuinely flabbergasted it ended on a cliffhanger, because i had absolutely zero knowledge of that prior to reading. i'm going to have to immediately binge the sequel.