I DNFed this one unfortunately. I got about 50% in and the pacing was not hitting for me. The ideas and worldbuilding are fantastic! But it just took too long to get there.

Many thanks to Netgalley and the publisher/author for providing me with an e-copy in exchange for my honest review.

This book was exactly what I wanted it to be! I loved it. I will make sure to check out other books by this author. When I requested this I was just intrigued by the concept of it and I loved how it turned out. This story had a great plot and if you have read this and enjoyed it, This was so much. It was such a great story. I would say give this one a try. I will continue to follow this author. Way to go to this author for not letting me down.

Thank you to netgalley for allowing me to read books ad give critical feedback to authors and publishers. Thank you to the author and publisher for allowing me to read the eARC of this book.

Apologies for the late review of this book.

I liked the writing style it was detailed and to the point. I have never read anything from A R Clinton before so I was nervous but I liked the book overall. I liked James as the main character and I liked the quotes in this book such as "feel the weight of the dead" I liked this a lot. I will be reading more from this author.

I will admit that I had to DNF this book. I hate doing that, but I found the text burdensomen to make it through. This is just a sword and sorcery fantasy wrapped in a very basic scifi package. It did read like an RA Salvatore book, so fans of him will probably like this work. Personally, I found the book confusingly written. You're never sure if the perspective you are reading from is human or alien until a few paragraphs in, and I think that really needed clarifying. I found the character builds unoriginal, and the invading species was just...too humanlike to be believable. Maybe they are supposed to be humanoid-like creatures--I dunno. It wasn't explained from either than terran or alien perspectives. This just could not hold my attention for me to find out either.

I was a little apprehensive to read this as i was in a fantasy slump but this was a well-written novel that done well with its descriptions. The action sequences were top-notch and the story was rich and fantastic.

This was a chunk of a book and there were some solid concepts and seeds of potential. We follow multiple point of view chapters of various people in a world that takes place in a semi-futuristic society after some mysterious grand-scale event called the Sundering. The main point of views consist of Shara , the prominent daughter of a politican and talented source-user ; Ayna , Shara's mother and the leader of a political party topside ; Hafi , the cynical military man who has that gruff-father-figure vibe going on; Tani, a researcher who lives underground; and Fiher, a Xenai and mysterious assassin figure. These are JUST the main ones... and yet I grew attached to none of them...

Let's start with what the book did right:
+ The Setting is really original and interesting. World-building can be super difficult and I think there was a ton of great ideas here. And I like the set-up of this whole book taking place Post-Sundering and we are only given bits of the world until you sort of fall into it.
+ I liked the Fiher chapters, more so for the lore of the Xenai and the bits of lore given rather than the character.
+ A.R. Clinton knows how to write a battle scene
+ There is a lot of characters but A.R. Clinton did a good job differentiating from them.

Okay, now why it is a lower rating:
+ The Characterizations. There is an outline for what these characters are meant to be , but the execution does not capture it at all. We are told of their personalities and dynamics with each other rather than shone. Moments of characterization are summarized mostly, and most written out scenes have to do with plot dumping and exposition. The characters feel more like tools of world-building than people.
+ Dense world-building
+ The book is very long, and very slow on top of that. Half the book I had no idea of an over-arching plot really.
+ Writing that is a bit too straightforward. And there's some cringe dialogue.

In the end, I wish I enjoyed this more, obviously there was so much time and thought and creativity put into the concepts of this book, it simply did not strike the right chords with me.