This book was incredible, once I got into it I couldn't put it down! The characters were wonderfully complex and conflicted, the plot was exciting and unique, the romantic tension was palpable, and the writing was beautiful. The only issue I had was that it needs another editing pass - there's quite a noticeable number of typos, extra words, missing words, etc. There are also a few places with redundancies in the writing - whether it's the same word repeated several times in a row (seemingly not intentionally) or the same sentence/idea repeated too many times.

Worldbuilding - This is a VERY dark world, and it only gets darker by the end of the book. All of the characters are at least morally grey, mostly pretty dark grey. There are no good ways out of any situation for the main characters. The monsters and history and cult are all very unique and I was on the edge of my seat reading about all of it. The only tiny detail that didn't make sense to me was why the power-hungry prince is so desperate to have his mother alive. But perhaps that is explained later on in the series.

Characters - I absolutely love that the evil love interest is ACTUALLY a monster. So often in romantasy you get a supposedly dark, evil villain love interest who is just genuinely nice and good all the time and just thinks he should be evil. Not here - he IS a monster and he continues to do monstrous things, he's just different with the FMC. And she is super conflicted by that in all the right ways. The FMC also has her own inner turmoil to deal with, and it very clearly drives her actions and decisions. Despite the plot being forced on both characters, their internal conflicts really do drive a lot of the action happening within the larger plot. Their romance is fraught and impossible and tragic and oh so beautiful. I could feel the tension and the pain and it broke my heart even as I drank it up. The prince was evil in logical ways, though clearly going a bit mad, for good reasons. We don't yet quite know what the Saint's deal is, but I'm sure we'll find out in the next book. Kahina Kira was the only one who didn't yet make sense to me, but we didn't see her much here so I assume we'll learn more about her in later books. My only issue with her was that she was supposed to be a mother-figure to Sorcha, and yet we didn't get to see that at all so all we see is this crazy woman. Maybe a flashback of her being actually motherly would have helped us feel Sorcha's confusion about Kira's actions a bit more.

Plot - Super intriguing right from the blurb. Death cults, political intrigue, and a resurrected god? Yes please! The book definitely delivers on all its promises. Learning about the Saint's history as we go through the story is perfectly well paced. The gathering of the relics each contained such new and unique challenges and mysteries that it never got old or stale. Reveals of information about the characters and the development of the romance was also perfectly paced.

Writing - Very beautiful descriptions, wonderful style that added to the tension and mystery of the world and plot. Character voices were clear, dialogue was always purposeful and strong, and descriptions of places never felt overly weighty. It was easy to imagine the world and the actions in my head. The only issue was with editing (significant number of types, extra words, missing words, mismatching tenses, etc.) and a few redundancies of words/phrases, particularly in the introspection parts.

I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.