it was a nice new fantasy, with a good world build and in dept characters.. Before long I was immersed in the story and damn it was good, ate this up in a day

I decided to continue reading this after initially DNF'ing the book. I still do not feel that I was the audience for this book, as it contained a lot of allusions to religion that I was unfamiliar with (not noted in synopsis). However, I do feel that the writing itself was engaging, the world-building was done well, and the characters, particularly the main character, was well developed.

spellbinding plunge into a world where magic is sacred, power is dangerous, and survival depends on mastering both

“Nothing hides in the glass city, Except truth”

Ceremony of Fire by C.D. Lawrence is set in a dystopian society where everyone’s thoughts and intentions are put on display for all to see, serving as a tool on which people are judged. It is also a society where one's righteousness is tested with a crown of fire. The test follows a simple principle: if you’re good, then you’re good; and if not, well, then you kind of get crisped on national television.

“The Crown offers certainty where there is none, promising to measure the immeasurable and judge the unknowable. How fortunate that fire cannot be wrong.”

The story overall did have its moments where I was shooketh at the different ways members of this society are constantly being tested to see if they’re deemed worthy to remain in the glass city or be banished to the Red C; a place you don’t want to end up at.

His Rite of Sacrifice came first. The ritual where he would be forced to kill what he loved most.

I can’t say I necessarily enjoyed this one; there were times when I felt like I might as well just pick up the Bible considering the amount of biblical references that this story is saturated with. I understood how it fit into Avalon’s specific society and this world as a whole, but it was just heavy enough that it occasionally took me out of the story and my investment in it.

The story had an interesting turn of events towards the end, which sets up the rest of this series(?), but I’m not entirely sure if I’ll continue with this one.