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When I started reading this one, I knew it was written by someone who was an experienced author. There’s just a smooth, almost easy feel to a book written by someone who has a few novels under their belt. It’s tough to explain, but I feel like maybe y’all know what I’m talking about. So, although the cover didn’t really do it for me, the opening chapter got me intrigued.
This is a story about a “street urchin” who’s gotten themselves into a bad spot — a bad enough spot where her execution is a possibility. This can get really boring really fast because I’ve read that storyline so many times before, but the world-building and writing kept me reading. It was teased that Violet is a “viperi” which to me sounded like a snake person, and I love snakes, so I was instantly intrigued. Yes, they are kind of snake-like, which was neat –but I got a little irked because some of the anatomy and powers she has doesn’t really line up with snakes in real life, but I try not to focus on that. It’s not a scifi, it’s a fantasy, let it go, Esme.
Violet, the MC, starts out as a very distrusting person, which makes sense since she’s a member of one of the most hated races. This is a world with a bunch of different humanoid races, like elves, and multiple kinds of elves at that. Violet is small like most Viperi, she has red eyes, which I’m not sure why it’s a snake attributed feature, they don’t typically have red eyes (let it go, Esme). She even has a heat-seeking ability, but I wish she had holes in her cheeks like snakes do (let it go, Esme). The Viperi are very rare race to encounter in every day life since they mostly live in subterranean cities. Violet is one of the first Viperi that the other characters have ever met, and most of them aren’t amused by her presence. She’s being forced to cooperate with a man called Roxus because he plucked her from a death sentence after she accidentally killed someone and was being sentenced to death. She’s being trained to be a part of the Zenith’s Core, which is a group that protects magical artifacts. They’re a group of very skilled fighters, and they want her because she’s super super humanly flexible, can see in the dark, has a scrappy attitude, and doesn’t really have a choice anyway.
At first, she’s resentful, angry, anxious, and skittish – all of which makes sense. She mentioned she has much more sensitive hearing than humans do, but snakes actually do not have great hearing, humans actually have significantly better hearing, particularly for higher-pitch sounds. Snakes tend to rely on vibrations through the ground to tip them off about predators or prey — which this book did touch on briefly, but I wish it were explored more in depth (let it go, Esme). But she soon becomes determined to prove herself. She doesn’t want to be hated, and she wants to prove her worth. She gets put into training, and combat trials among other hopeful trainees to the Zenith’s Core. The other trainees are dickbags and she has to prove her worth over and over again. So for people who like training montages, scrappy/feisty characters, this could really appeal to you all.
It all starts to go wrong when there are break-ins to a temple, and Violet is getting blamed. She has to prove she’s not the criminal or risk being thrown out back onto the streets, where an executioner’s block could be in her future.
I read some of the reviews after I read the book and turns out, this is a backstory to an already established series. I’ve got to say, well done, because I didn’t know this was a continuation of an already established world. Sometimes when that happens, I get lost because the book is aimed at folks who already have a lot of background knowledge and things aren’t explained in a way where a newbie would understand. I didn’t get that feeling here, and I was surprised to learn it’s a back-story kind of book to a previously established series.
I finished this book in a few sittings since it reads pretty quickly. I liked the world building, it was built mostly without info dumping which gives it a more natural lived-in feeling rather than feeling like a dry history book.
Overall, I’d recommend this to people who like to focus on a single POV, likes scrappy characters, likes training montages, mysteries, and a world with a lot of different human-ish races that don’t like each other. For right now, this book is being marked as safe.