For a book that has "Twilight Fans will love this" written on its cover, this is a surprisingly good treatise on consent. Sure, there is a war going on, traitors to find, and a manipulative child tyrant to defeat, as well as cool magical worldbuilding, but what interested me most was the impact all of this had on Fire's arc with consent and agency. I found the rest of the story interesting enough as well. The intrigue and the magical elements appealed to me. But still, what kept me most interested was Fire's struggle with her own agency in her life and people's reactions to her, the struggle between being smothered but safe or free but in danger, and finding something in between that works for her. And even more, the issue of consent involved in her nature and power, where she did not consent to the way people reacted to her and treated her, but also struggled with the question of other people's consent to the usage of her powers on them. I think the climaxes of both the graceling child and the war might have been dissatisfying to me if they had been the main draw to this story (I found them vaguely anticlimactic, actually), but as this took only secondary interest behind Fire's personal arc, I can in good conscience give this book 5 stars.

DNF at 65%. I just couldn't care less. I didn't like the characters, the plot was boring. After almost 300 pages I still didn't know where it was going. We were just following the same routine, day after day after day. Why not tell more about the story, the monsters, the history of the land? Give the characters more depth. But no. They just start liking each other without reason (even though they hate each other when meeting for the first time) or get jealous. The decision making was just...questionable? The age gaps, the never ending sex desires and the two pregnancies at once were too much. I loved Graceling. But this book was not for me.