This was an AMAZING story!! I loved the writing style and how it kept me interested all the way through. I can’t wait for the next book! I have to know what’s going to happen!

“Fear serves nothing once it’s warning is made.”

The story is told from the point of view of Iriset, a prodigy at architectural design with an alter-ego named Silk. The character goes from a hidden persona, to a jail cell to becoming a handmaiden for the most powerful woman in the empire.

This slower-paced, high-fantasy, gender fluid world is packed full of heavy prose and incredibly intricate world building.

Thank you to Orbit Books & NetGalley for the Advanced Readers Copy (ARC) of The Mercy Makers by Tessa Gratton.

DNF at 44% As someone who LOVES world-building, I didn't think it was possible to have too much of it in a story. 40% in and we are still discussing the gender identity facing and how much she wants to lick everyone's neck. I'm all for an all-inclusive book, but this overabundance of description left little room for the plot, which is unfortunate because it had so much potential. It was such an interesting idea.

Unfortunately I had to DNF this book 20% in, Although the world and the plot seemed interesting, I really couldn't get behind the writing. I put it down at one point, and never thought about picking it up again. Just not the book for me!

Unfortunately I had to DNF this book 20% in, Although the world and the plot seemed interesting, I really couldn't get behind the writing. I put it down at one point, and never thought about picking it up again. Just not the book for me!

Sadly I had to DNF this book around the 5% mark.
I was trying to make it further in but just could not.
Y0u immediately get thrown into a scene that is so chock full of terms and names and a magic system that... just does not get explained or clarified in any way.
I almost thought it was a sequel book, the way terms were being thrown about.

Thank you to the publisher for the eARC, but I will not be finishing or further reviewing this book.

RIYL: Tragic romantasy, SFF about Empire, fantasy worldbuilding

The Mercy Makers by Tessa Gratton is an unwieldy fantasy novel, with a first half weighed down by heaps of worldbuilding and a too-talented, flawless protagonist, but a second half that reinvigorates the story in such a way that it kept me engaged and excited for the rest of the book. While I haven’t read any of the so-called romantasy books, I think this book manages to extract the compelling aspects of that genre (great sex scenes, compelling tortured relationships) without its flaws (bad prose, half-baked worldbuilding), though I don’t think it should necessarily be marketed as such. While one of the main romantic and sexual relationships of the story is a straight one, Irisit and many other characters are explicitly queer, both in ways that fit within the fictional empire’s accepted sexualities and in ways that strain against those restrictions.

Our protagonist Irisit is the daughter of a criminal kingpin, living a double-life as a magical inventor (using the setting’s magic system, called architecture) known as Silk. Her works of “architecture” defy the imperial religion, known as Silence, branding her as an anarchic apostate and terrorist. The book opens with the Empire arresting her and her father, though a different handmaid pretends to be “Silk,” leaving Irisit as a political prisoner, kept close as a handmaiden to the Emperor’s sister, Amaranth. Irisit knows her father will be executed in several months, giving her a tight timeframe in which to try to orchestrate his release without revealing that she is the prodigy terrorist the Empire seeks.

For the first half of the book, I found myself growing bored with Irisit’s talent. She is a genius, never making a false step, with her magic power never quite explained enough to really understand its limits. If she’s ever frustrated in her plots, its only because of situations out of her control, never because of her overreach or personal flaws. I could already see the review I’d write, complaining about how boring ultra-competent protagonists are to me. Until the second half, where Gratton transforms Irisit’s raw talent and competency to the only interesting place to take a protagonist who never fails at her schemes; make her schemes difficult decisions. If your character wields ultimate power and never fails at their goals, make those goals morally complex and give them real repercussions.

The same worldbuilding that so slows the book down is also one of the most interesting parts about it, though we never see outside of the world’s imperial capital city, Moonshadow. The Empire, through its scientific and rigidly-controlled faith of Silence, operates on a strict racial caste system, intentionally taking subjugated peoples’ children from them to reeducate them into the standard imperial citizen. Its use of “architecture” operates on control, subtlety, and rigid binaries and hierarchies, ostensibly to oppose the previous Apostate Age where architects operated on people and animals and unleashed chaos that almost destroyed the world. The current emperor, Lyric, is a thoughtful, spiritual tyrant; the type of emperor who would have been a good and kind person if he wasn’t born into his oppressive position. His younger sister Amaranth is the more ambitious, political creature, but by virtue of being second-born, she is instead given a strange position as the lover of a supposedly-trapped, invisible god that must be “sated” every morning to keep the Empire together. She - along with many characters in this book - are highly sensual creatures, and the sexually-liberated Irisit finds herself both repulsed by these wielders of imperial power and attracted to their beauty and power.

I particularly found the setting’s exploration of four forces present in different ratios in all people - rising, falling, flow, and ecstatic - a refreshing and original idea, almost like another approach to gender or personality (though the setting also offers a brief glimpse into alternative genders as well.) The key distinctions of these four forces are never fully explained - to the book’s benefit - which keeps them feeling more spiritual and esoteric and less Hogwarts Houses. The magic system of architecture itself, however, feels a little too vague. After reading the whole book, I could never quite understand what Irisit was doing when she did magic, with any of the descriptions seemingly hand-waving any details to the point where I’d simply have to think “oh, I guess she can just do that now.” I’m fine with fantasy magic being hard to pin down and dreamlike (in fact, that’s my preference), but the magic here is literally portrayed as being rigid and scientific. It would have helped with the book’s sense of stakes to have a firmer grasp on what was possible for Irisit to do; as such, I still think she seems virtually omnipotent.

I didn’t fully love this book, but especially once it reaches the halfway point and reveals what it’s really about, it becomes a pretty fun read with compelling character dynamics and a rich world. I will certainly read the inevitable sequel, especially since the book only touches on its spoken themes of revolution and the fall of empire, and I’m curious to see what new approaches or perspectives Gratton brings to my favorite contemporary SFF subgenre. This is a hard book to recommend, as the Goodreads reviews attest, but I think if you’re a dedicated contemporary fantasy fan looking for your next new series, this might be right up your alley.

Rating: ****

The Mercy Makers is set to publish tomorrow, June 17, 2025.

Thanks to NetGalley for the advance copy in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts expressed are my own.

I was super excited about this, but the more I read the more my excitement waffled. The writing style was hard to understand and grab my attention.

This book has a strong concept -- seemingly beautiful world building, interesting, diverse characters, and the foundations of an excellent plot. The idea of human architecture and modifications is quite compelling, adding a unique, science fiction element to the fantasy novel. However, the writing and characterization suffers a bit.

The book could almost use an intro dedicated to the world -- including the concepts of gender and pronouns. I adore the take on gender in this book -- the confidence with which Tessa brings in alternate pronouns and the general fluid concept of gender and parenthood. However, without knowing before hand the pronouns specific to this book, it was confusing as a reader. In addition, the general world building got confusing at times -- the political structure and motivations. The naming system I think was the biggest problem.

I enjoyed Iriset, I enjoyed her family dynamics and her background and skill set and inner monologues -- but I also found her confusing. At times she seemed at odds with herself. As I said, there is definitely potential here, but could use some work.

I really wanted to enjoy The Mercy Makers, but I found it difficult to connect with the story. The book dives straight into dense world-building and heavy magic use without much explanation, leaving the reader to navigate unfamiliar terms and complex systems alone. The prose leans toward overly literary language, which only adds to the confusion. A prologue and/or glossary would have gone a long way in helping to ground the reader. As it stands, the lack of clarity made the story hard to follow and emotionally distant. This also gave vibes of Discovery of Witches with similar thread-weaving magic, but it definitely falls short of that masterpiece.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

The Mercy Makers is sweeping, philosophical fantasy at its finest. Tessa Gratton has constructed a world where gods walk among mortals, power is sacred and contested, and mercy is the most dangerous choice of all. This book asks big questions—about belief, forgiveness, and legacy—and delivers on them with gravitas and grace.

The prose is rich, the character arcs complex, and the themes devastatingly relevant. Gratton writes with confidence and emotional clarity, making every chapter feel urgent and holy. It’s a book that challenges you to think—and feel—deeper. I was floored.

Highlights
~definitely siding with the criminals
~let’s fuck up biology with magic
~screw the gods
~screw everyone you like
~fantasy as a concept, queered

Oh.

Oh.

Oh.

*

This book is perfect.

There are no ‘but’s*. There are only ‘and’s. ‘THIS thing is perfect and THIS thing is perfect and THIS OTHER THING ALSO.’

I will tell you about them. I will. But it’s hard. Mercy Makers is too much for me to discuss lightly; too much made for me, all my feelings for it intimate and raw and feral. Mercy Makers feels private, precious, printed in my blood on parchment made of me. As if Gratton reached into my deepest heart and spilled everything they found out onto the pages – and half of what they found I didn’t know was down there. Whispers, wishes, half-formed, wordless longings that Gratton crystallised and spun into stained glass windows, all jewels and light and breathless, hurting awe.

What do you do when someone takes everything you ever wanted – and everything you didn’t know you wanted – and makes it heart-stoppingly, stunningly, searingly beautiful before they give it back to you?

What the fuck. How dare. Who gave you the RIGHT.

Thank you.

So bear with me. I’ll do my best, but this is hard. Mercy Makers means too much to me to make this easy.

*

Here is a world that once had two moons. But one fell, and out of it came a god, and out of the god came a city, and out of the city came an empire. It is a place where everyone wears masks, to keep mages from stealing their faces; where same-sex relations are looked on benignly but any pairing that could create a pregnancy is regulated; where the ‘pope’ gives her god a spiritual orgasm every day. Graffiti moves and morphs, criminals are unmade without mercy, and healing is heresy. Silence is everything.

Here is a world.

And here is the woman who is going to break it.

Her name is Iriset, but she prefers Silk. She is a master of human architecture – using magic to alter or repair living tissue. This makes her a heretic. She doesn’t care. She’s obsessed, passionate, about the search for knowledge, about experimenting, pushing boundaries, learning. She is a hedonist, inspiringly, sublimely sensual; she is ruthless, except when she is not. She is wickedly, dangerously intelligent; she is excellent at justifying what she wants. She is manipulative, devious, and gloriously unashamed. (Of what? Everything.) She is not amoral, but she’s close, from certain angles – or maybe it would be more accurate to say that she has her own code of ethics, and it won’t always line up with yours.

shake the empire to its core because that’s what they deserve, that’s what everyone who pretends the laws of Holy Silence matter more than lives and healing and progress and science and hope and all those other things Iriset doesn’t believe in but must be better.

She’s not the linchpin, but she is the catalyst. The lit match dropped into the lake of oil.

Boom.

*

Everything about this book is perfect.

That makes it hard to know where to start.

*

Mercy Makers is incandescent, equal parts sensual and feral, thrillingly defiant of genre and societal convention alike. It is respendently, revellingly, ravishingly strange; not Weird Fiction, which is so aggressively bizarre it elicits a knee-jerk recoil from most of us, but something far more entrancing, seductive. Mercy Makers dresses itself in silken camouflage and eye-catching jewels to trick and distract you, make you think you know what it is. And so you feel safe, comfortable; and so you let your guard down; and so the strangeness seeps in to you, like dye that won’t ever wash out.

Aharté’s silver-pink moon hangs like a pearl affixed to the brocade of the sky.

Here is a jewel, sparkling: long before the book starts, the setting of Mercy Makers had four genders. How interesting! What a neat little detail, decorative and unthreatening because it is not plot-relevant.

Here is the true strangeness, subtle and easily overlooked, but subliminally ground-breaking: Iriset describes every new person she meets as masculine- or feminine-forward. She is not assuming their sex or gender; she is marking how they present, separating physical markers from gender. A ‘fem-forward’ voice is not necessarily a woman’s voice; it just registers as feminine. Someone who is strongly masculine-forward is probably a man, because if they weren’t they would be suppressing or obscuring that which reads as masculine. A body – what Iriset calls their ‘design’, or sometimes ‘outer design’ – can be masculine-forward, but if the person is wearing feminine-forward clothing, then they’re probably a woman. It’s subtle and quiet and Gratton doesn’t make a big deal of it, but it is a big deal, it’s an approach to gender and sex that is revolutionary to the one most of us are walking around with!

(This is not even close being the only groundbreaking thing Gratton does with gender in this book, and I can’t not talk about one of the others. Real quick: neopronouns are newly invented pronoun sets intended to be gender-neutral or nonbinary, and almost all of the English ones mimic she/he in spelling and pronunciation. This is a problem, because it causes a lot of people to read or hear ‘ze’ or whatever and reflexively associate it with male or female, because it looks like and rhymes with he or she. It’s hard to encounter someone, even a fictional someone, and try not to tag them male or female in your head; pronouns too close to gendered ones don’t help with resisting that reflex.

Gratton uses a/an/ans – functioning like he/his/his – for their nonbinary character in Mercy Makers, and I cannot convey to you what a galaxy-brain moment that was for this particular nonbinary bookwyrm right here. I cannot convey to you how it wrecked me, to finally be able to articulate why so many neopronouns are unsatisfying. I didn’t consciously understand this was a problem until Gratton casually solved it. My mind is blown, my eyes are full of tears, my heart is too full for words. This is a BIG DEAL, and of course it took a nonbinary writer as brilliant as Gratton to think of it.)

“I am strong enough to offer trust first.”

Then you start to realise that the culture Gratton’s created doesn’t value or treat men and women differently at all. You might think, for example, that the position of Moon-Eater’s Mistress – the head of the dominant faith – is one filled only by women; it’s the word ‘mistress’, I think, and what that means in our world. But nope: past Mistresses have been men, and in fact the current emperor wishes he’d been born second because he’d much rather be Mistress than emperor (which imperial sibling gets which role is based only on birth order). This is only one of many examples. It’s surprisingly difficult to find modern fantasy settings that aren’t at least a little bit patriarchal – comes of the writers growing up in patriarchal cultures and not scrutinising their own biases and worldbuilding enough, is my guess. And when you do come across an author who’s trying to do this, they usually forget to populate the book with enough background women to be convincing; most of us automatically make filler characters men (unless it’s a role that’s stereotypically woman-ish, like nurse or nursemaid) and when 90% of your unnamed characters are men alongside most of your main cast, your ‘the sexes are equal here’ fails to convince. Gratton has neatly skipped over both these pitfalls; the sexes are equal here, down to the tiniest details, and there are women everywhere, named and unnamed. And while many readers aren’t going to be able to articulate what it is about this setting, they are going to notice subliminally. Femme-full settings make an impact. They feel different. (And wonderful.) This is yet another way that Gratton has, quietly, flipped the tables.

“I will,” Iriset says, condemning herself to glory.

Not all of it is quiet. The jewels of the more overt worldbuilding are flawlessly cut and placed, drawing the eye and dazzling: the magic system, called architecture, with its intricate designs of four-fold forces; rainbow bees; a goddess and her wife. This is a rich, sumptuous world spilling over with wonders and strangeness, and Gratton has gone wild in creating a setting that reminds you of nowhere else, that is thrillingly original, that feels like Fantasy, capital f and all. I would even go so far as to say this isn’t merely queer fantasy; it’s queered fantasy, fantasy done different. This is what Fantasy is supposed to be: imagination that takes no prisoners, that indulges itself and revels in doing so, that has no interest at all in what is conventional, normal, expected.

The person has seven big eyes arcing across their face and forehead, each starry and bright like a different hour of the night sky between twilight and dawn.

That lack of convention continues into the precious-metal setting for all those gemmed details, parts of the book even less obvious than the worldbuilding, but easily as subversive. (Are subversive and sublime related? In Mercy Makers they are.) More readers pick up on worldbuilding than the nuances of the actual writing, though in Mercy Makers the two are closely related; the prose reinforces the worldbuilding. It’s the way Gratton writes about sex – not just unashamedly, but depicting sex as something to revel in because bodies are something to revel in, less a counter-argument to the Western ideas about sex and shame than a complete ignoring of them. It’s the language Gratton uses to describe fatness, as if fat-shaming has never been a thing at all. It’s the off-handed way in which we learn that in this setting, marriages can be between more than two people. It’s the seemingly accidental way Gratton breaks convention in their prose style: View Spoiler » are such mind-reeling choices that are done so damn quietly – and that’s what makes them so mind-reeling, that’s why you reel, because Gratton wields them like scalpels and sets them off like bombs and if it had been less subtle the explosions wouldn’t have been as big.

Sheer silk and the most delicate layers of linen drape her thick, rolling body, hugging breasts and hips and belly as if that cloth were the most blessed thing in all the world for being allowed to drift so near her flesh.

And all of this is without even really touching on Iriset as a character, who is herself, quite literally, a living middle finger to convention, both in her own world (heretic, remember) and in ours, because how often are we allowed to have morally-grey, ambitious women characters who are extremely horny with none of that negating their sheer, once-in-a-generation genius? And without touching at all everything Gratton has to say about empire, and love, and mercy; about faith and heresy and not finding a kinder interpretation of religion but going fuck the gods, actually; about how everything, and I do mean EVERYTHING, every single conflict in the book, can be distilled down to stagnation/stasis vs creativity/life. I could write a THESIS on all the ways sex permeates this book and the way it’s presented and someone smarter than me had better do it, because if I do it I the entire thing WILL be in caps-lock. Let me say instead, as a kind of shorthand, that Mercy Makers is the spiritual heir to Kushiel’s Dart, which is probably why they put Jacqueline Carey’s approval on the cover, as they should.

“The very existence of the Days of Mercy proves that the regular state of empire is a merciless one.”

Or the PLOT, which is Iriset-worthy (which is to say, genius). Everything in the book’s synopsis is technically accurate, but nothing plays out the way the synopsis implies it will, and I was endlessly dazzled by the way Gratton never did what I expected (yet another way this book ignores convention is in its plot-beats). This book had me anxious, breathless, furious, terrified, freaked, exulting and, at one point about halfway through, I had to put the book down and sob for about an hour (GRATTON YOU KNOW WHAT YOU DID). The twists, the table-flips, and yet none of it done for shock value, all of it fitting together like an architectural marvel.

Apostasy only exists if you believe in god.

The edifice of wonder Gratton has built here is breathtaking.

(This book even manages to be funny! On top of everything else, it made me laugh! Humour is probably the hardest thing to write ever and Gratton did that as well!)

Iriset was not made for emergencies. She should be kept in a locked room with design tools and left alone.

The Mercy Makers is opulent, decadent, extravagantly strange and exquisitely lush, all velvet and crystal and sharp, broken glass. It is deeply queer and completely nonconformist. It’s inspiring, and I can’t wait to see what it inspires; there is no other book like it. It’s a glamour-bomb dropped into a genre that’s in need of a little waking up. It’s…

It is literally everything I ever wanted. I have sometimes said that in reviews before; sometimes, if I am feeling extra-brave, I have been honest enough to say, everything I ever wanted, except unicorns. Well, Mercy Makers even gave me unicorns.

the delicate unicorns fled, too intelligent to be captured, and it is possible some live in the wilds beyond the empire

Words don’t do Mercy Makers justice, so allow me to invent a new one for it: irisedent.

(Nobody tell Iriset, I can only imagine how smug she’d be to have inspired a new adjective!)

irisedent/ˈɪrɪsɛdɛnt/ adjective
1. Relating to or characteristic of Iriset mé Isidor; genius; mind-blowing; perfection.

Irisedent. Sublime, subversive, scintillating. The best book of the year; easily one of the best books of the decade. Or maybe it’s quicker to just say: everything.

This book is EVERYTHING.

Lots of spider imagery, which isn’t necessarily for me. But cool queer characters!

Thanks, NetGalley, Orbit Books, and Tessa Gratton for this eARC in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the ARC.

A tentative 2.75 stars rounded up. The world the author created for this series is deeply impressive, with every detail of the empire intricately plotted, but it's also perhaps *too* thought-out, to the point that all the details included feel overwhelming. The effect it creates is a lushly described atmosphere that feels entirely unique but is also extremely confusing to figure out. Maybe I'm just dumb but I couldn't really grasp how the forces worked or picture how they could be manipulated, and because of this, even though Iriset is described as a genius the likes of which has never been seen, I couldn't really understand how she was in a league of her own without the proper contrast of what people are usually able to do; this was especially stark in the climax where Iriset's genius plan has to come together. The pacing was also really bogged down by all the detail; I feel like the first 50% of the book was a lot of extremely slow meandering before something significant happens to shake things up (and that was when I started getting excited!) but then it meanders again before getting exciting again in the last 15%. I especially liked the last revelation about the empire itself; I thought that was set-up well.

For the most part, I enjoyed the lush prose but as mentioned, it can become overbearing with all the description and tangents, and there were a few notable points where my immersion in this high fantasy world was broken with uses of words like "hangry", "horny", and "Dad". Also, I understand race is an important aspect in the story, but the next time I read "mirane-brown/red" and "Osahar desert-peach", it will be too soon; these descriptors were used way too much. I also really appreciated the unique indicators of gender and a character who used entirely new pronouns (Raia was a favorite character of mine as well), but simultaneously it was a bit jarring to read "an" and "ans", I think both sentiments can co-exist. I'm not entirely certain as to what can be done about that though, as that will always be something that happens with neopronouns.

For the characters themselves, I appreciated how three-dimensional and complicated they were but I also at times felt too stupid to understand the intricacies of their relationships with one another, particularly Iriset's with Amaranth, Lyric, and Singix. I also understand that Iriset is not meant to be a good person but I do have to say that her intense attraction to Lyric persisting despite him firmly and directly ordering her father's death did not really help convince me of their love story and the later significant development in their relationship made it even more uncomfortable for me when it seems like it was obviously meant to be titillating, considering how the sex scenes are framed. I'm not sure if I'll pick up the sequel but I really hope in the next book, it won't redeem their love story and instead emphasizes how all that has happened between them so far means there is a rift that is completely impossible to bridge; I really cannot see any couple moving past what they went through.

I’ll start by saying this book is not for everyone. There is some complex world-building and a magic system inspired by math and architecture. As one who is not very mathematically inclined, it took some getting used to.

That being said, I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this book. I’ve not read a book like this one before. It was unique and unlike other fantasy books I’ve read, I wasn't able to guess where the story was going. Like the writing style and worldbuilding, it took me some time to warm up to the characters but by the end, I was cheering on Iriset as she plotted and schemed to take down the empire. I will definitely be picking up the next book.

I'm so sorry, but I had to DNF this. I have never been more confused by a book. The writing style and the plot both were over my head.

The beginning of the story was a little slower than I’d like. It took a while to get into the book, but once I did the storyline kept my interest. I will continue the series to see where the ending takes us.

*Thanks to NetGalley. Orbit Books and Hachette Audio for early copy for review*

I was lucky enough to be able to listen to the audiobook while reading along to wrap my head around the fantasy world that Tessa Gratton has crafted.

Emily Lawrences lush narrating style felt sensual. In a world where a "priestess" awakens a god by self-gratification, Lawrence's performance added to the overall experience.

That being said this book wasn't really for me. It never 100% captured my interest and left me feeling like I was watching something I did not consent too. However, if you enjoy reading fantasy that is feminist, queer and highly sexual (even when there's no sex on page) this read could be for you. I would get an example of the writing style before checking it out though.

Thank you to Tessa Gratton, Orbit, and NetGalley for giving me an eARC of The Mercy Makers in exchange for my honest review.

The Mercy Makers is the first book in what is being described as a romantic, epic fantasy trilogy. It follows Iriset, who is both a prodigy and an outlaw. She is the daughter of a powerful criminal and holds the alter ego Silk, who is also wanted. With her father being captured and sentenced to death, Iriset is given an out from a similar fate, and becomes a handmaiden in the palace. Determined to free her father and change their fate, Iriset embarks on a dangerous quest where she will have to figure out who she can trust amidst dangerous political games and do her best not to lose her heart along the way.

One aspect of this book that I really appreciated is that we were following Iriset try to navigate her way through the palace, acting as though she were innocent and was not involved in her father's schemes. It is an interesting dynamic to watch play out, and through that dynamic, as a reader, we get to see Iriset grow into her own person with her own beliefs outside of the world that she was raised in. The plot of this book was fast-paced and yet not at the same time. It took many twists and turns, and there was a lot going on, however, that is what I would imagine palace life to be like. As readers, we get to learn about the world, the political climate, and the magic system through Iriset's journey in the palace. The writing style is definitely more descriptive and "flowery," so to speak, so be aware if that is not your favorite thing. I personally think it worked with this book. This book feels as though it is setting up for a much bigger plot point than breaking her father out of prison, and I am interested to see what is next, because I get a sneaky suspicion this was about setup rather than a big plot point book. But we shall see.

Wow okay, so this book was seriously hard to get into for me, but it was sooo worth it. At about 50% of the way through I felt like we were really getting into the juicy bits of the book!

Iriset is the daughter of what is basically an underworld boss, and she also moonlights as Silk, an illegal human architect who manipulates force into ways never seen before in the empire. When she is taken into custody, she must hide who she truly is and play a very deadly game of political intrigue.

I truly enjoyed this book, but I will say if you don’t have high / epic fantasy world building experience you may end up DNF because it’s a tough one to understand throughout a lot of it. The magic system is very interesting but there isn’t one section that explains it all, so you just have to glean the information as you go. The religion is pretty similar but so intricate and fascinating! The characters all have huge flaws and Iriset has a wonderful character arc throughout the first book. I didn’t realize that this is a series and now I’m pretty sad that I won’t find out what happens next for a while!

Definitely 4/5 stars for me, and if you’re ready for a challenge you should check it out!