I really liked the idea of this book, although I wasn’t too happy to learn that this is a series inside of another series (authors gotta start disclaiming that on the cover/synopsis because it is happen too often to me). It was however somewhat readable as its own book without having to know or read the previous books. At the same time though it was not without challenge.
At the beginning I really liked the main characters with their banter and the setup to the story. I thought it was going to keep it to that level throughout the book which had me in love with the story just in the first chapter. That love shortly turned sour though as the plot started to develop, because suddenly all names, places and characters were thrown in that made it very apparent that this was part of a bigger series. This wouldn’t necessarily had made it too difficult to follow if it wasn’t for every character talking and behaving exactly the same, making it difficult to tell anyone apart.
Seriously, everyone, and I mean everyone, were on constant joke and banter mode no matter the situation or who they were speaking to. It made it feel so forced since their joke-full banter often did not fit the situation they were in (eg, fighting for their life). Because everyone had this personality trait it made it so that no one had any personality at all. after all, make everyone special in the world and then no one is special at all anymore because they are all exactly the same. The same thing with the magic in this story.
Everyone was made so powerful that the magic in the world felt kind of underwhelming and inconsequential. Even here it was difficult to tell different magic apart since it was all so similar in who could do what, whether they were shifters, demons, faeries or dragon born. It also made the whole conflict between dragon shifters and dragon born feel off since there were so little telling them apart to begin with. It was more like fighting for the sake of fighting and little else. Even when they were fighting against enemies it felt underwhelming due to that forced banter making situations that could be filled with drama and suspense instead light and unrealistic. Especially when said characters were so quick to forgive and forget because the plot forced them to just to move the story along.
I could go on about how forced the conflict in the end felt or how off I found it how everyone in the fighting scenes stood still like they were waiting for someone to call “action!” while another two characters fought each other or life. At the end of the day though I think I could just summarize it to this book, and probably the whole series in the same world, just is not for me.