☆ Fun Factor 2/5 (It's really slow from beginning to end)
☆ Writing Style 5/5
☆ Characters 4/5
☆ Plot 4/5 (Despite the very fantasy cover, this is a murder/conspiracy mystery novel in a fantasy setting)
☆ Setting 2/5
☆ Feels 1/5
☆ Spiciness 1/5 (mild sexual references)
☆ Gore 3/5 (torture, whipping, dismemberment, monster mayhem)

If this were a movie it'd be rated: R for mild sexual situations, violence, body horror, disturbing imagery, dismemberment, murder, blood

☆FOR FANS OF: The Justice of Kings or just the idea of a mystery set in a fantasy world

Ultimate verdict: ☆☆☆☆/5

☆☆☆Best Character Award goes to:☆☆☆ Vigilant Enelda Drake was a very unconventional choice for a secondary protagonist: an old woman seemingly retired from her Order of "necromancers". The mentor-mentee relationship between Enelda and Hawley paid off for me.

Review: A very slow start to a potentially great series

The very Wheel of Time inspired looking cover fooled me into thinking I was going to get an epic fantasy with wizards, elves, dragons, dwarves and so on. That's not what this actually is. This is actually a lot more akin to Richard Swan's Empire of the Wolf trilogy (also published by Orbit). Like Empire of the Wolf, this is a series of slowly trickling details through a lot of investigative work: conversations, digging through old logs, gradually piecing together what's going on. If you're on board with that idea, you'll have a lot to like here. Our two investigators are Holt Hawley, a struggling, hot headed Sargeant who finds himself displaced from his company early on in the books and Vigilant Enelda "Nell" Drake, a more or less retired member of of a sacred order called the Vigilants who once held great sway in the world and have now become disgraced. Enelda's the brains and Hawley's the brawn as they travel together to solve the mystery of why so many children are disappearing. There's more to what's happening than meets the eye.

There's promise here for a larger series to expand on revelations learned in the back quarter of the novel. It was slower moving than I liked personally, but for those of you that really love to spend a lot of time getting to know your characters before the plot gets going good, this might be for you.

Thank you to NetGalley, the author, and the publisher for this early copy in exchange for my honest review!