I received this novel as an advanced copy from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
When I first read the description of this book, it immediately reminded me of Nevernight by Jay Kristoff. Since the second book hasn’t been released yet, I decided to use this book as a substitute!
Sallot Leon is a thief, and good at it. But gender fluid Sal wants nothing more than to escape life as a highway robber and get the opportunity to take revenge on the nobles who destroyed Sal’s home. When Sal sees a poster announcing auditions for the position of Left Hand, a powerful collection of the Queen’s personal assassins, Sal knows this is the chance of a lifetime. However, the audition is anything but easy; it is a fight to the death filled with people of all different walks of life – with various deadly skills. A childhood as a common criminal hardly prepared Sal for the trials. But Sal must survive to fulfill the ultimate goal: revenge.
This was really not at all like Nevernight and I must admit that I was quite disappointed with what I read. I really appreciated the author having a gender fluid protagonist; it was a great way to introduce diversity to the literary character world while also giving a new perspective to the story. However, it was not enough to redeem the story in my eyes. This book, while full of action, was quite boring. I have no idea how the author managed to accomplish this but it was probably due to the ridiculous amount of description and the plethora of training scenes that really did nothing to move the story forward. The plot is also very similar to a bunch of assassin YA novels that are currently out there and there really wasn’t anything unique about this one. The characters were also not very fleshed out and I had an especially hard time connecting with Sal; the personality changes were so swift that it was hard to establish anything solid about Sal that I could rely upon. Overall, this novel failed in its plot and execution, and I would give this a 1.5/5 stars.
Happy reading ~