The sad thing is, this could have been the perfect and most awesome book. It could have even been my favourite book. It had everything, complex world, intense plot, innovative concept. tragic and dark aesthetic.

It was creative and innovative and felt fresh. Like it finally broke through an invisible wall in Sci-Fi Land to create a new exciting thrilling story, with a new world to explore.

But there were issues for me.
First of all, the action scene were no fun. They were badly written. I was not able to follow the movement. If you write action scenes you need to be precise, but this is what the book is most lacking in, detailed precision. I zoomed out all the time and just flew over the words until things calmed down and I knew what was going on again. There was not any content to be missed in the action scenes anyway, because you just needed to know the consequences. The stakes were not high in that regard.

Additionally, there were plot holes. Worst case for me was the set up with the set up for the Ninth House and certain actions of characters in the book. If there is no clear motive for the characters and they just act according to what you want your plot to go like, it feels like cheap writing, hidden away by big words (pretty regular concept of writing books in my native language and there is nothing more hateful and bad then doing that). So it might seem like super smart plotting, but really it wasn't. The writing was moulded so it fit, so you could not call on the plot twist. But it could have been everything in the end, whatever fitted the author the most. That is not well done plotting.

Additionally the writing is so vague at points, that you have no idea what the author meant. Did the character do something by their own free will or was it something they were forced to do. That drove me nuts. It was suggestive and let on to a lot of speculation on my end, which then did not deliver and it turned out to be the most easy option from the very beginning and would not have needed to waste so much time thinking critically about.

Nontheless, it was a great book. And an exciting read and it deserves the 5 stars for the entertainment and the innovation. I am thrilled to read on, and i hope that all the above points are mostly debut author mistakes and Muir will grow with the series as an Author. I love that she was bold enough to bring something new on the table. I has so much good content mixed in, especially with the magic, that i would not want to miss any of it. And i cannot wait until i want to reread again and find all the little easter eggs I missed the first time.