I’ve meant to read this book for a while now and am so glad I finally picked it up, I immediately wanted to read the second part. The world building is done nicely, as the MC learn more, so do we but not in a scholarly or boring way. And as the story continues, we see the characters grow and learn - and find out more about the mysteries. My favourite part was the magic system: everyone gives up a piece of bone shard and the connected life delivers energy for whatever monstrosity the emperor designed, so we have magic, suffering and obviously a rebellion. There is also some sort of “familiar”/ spirit animal that has to be further developed in the next book, pretty please? The plot had me guessing all the time (in a good way) and new elements kept changing my theories. I was definitely surprised by the ending as it felt a little too closed but then another POV opened the door to the next book wide open. In this case, I read the German translation and it was a smooth read without linguistic hitches (thumbs up to the translator), I’d guess the English original is also a smooth and easily understood style.

somewhere between 1,5 and 2 stars. I liked the premise and the magic but the characters were flat / boring. Phalue / Ranami were so annoying. Too many POVs. Nothing ever went wrong and nothing ever really mattered. Lin did nothing the whole book. Jovis felt like he was cut from Disney's Tangled. At least he was funny sometimes, but man the luck these characters have to always be at the right place. they were also too much whining about, woe is me, and thinking way too much. also, because i listened to the audio book: they read soooo slow. from 50% onward i listened to it with 2x speed.