The author had me at necromancy. Because I am horribly predictable and easy.

As a reader, obviously. Did I mention the main character also dies in the first chapter? Talk about grabbing your attention.

Caitlin Seal presents a world where the dead have a second chance at life … and thankfully, they’re not zombies.

Because I don’t do zombies. *shudders* Necromancy abounds in Ceramor, where souls are bound by runes to their bones. Some are just reanimated dead. Others are wraiths. Neither one is particularly trusted by the living.

Thanks to Charlesbridge Teen and NetGalley for an eARC of this in exchange for an honest, unbiased review.

There were quite a few sticky points, but when it comes down to it, will I read the sequel? You bet! I felt like things really kicked up towards the end of the book, and by the time it ended, it left me wanting to know more.

**Quotes that appear in this review are from an eARC and may not appear verbatim in the final version.**

❧ Corten is pretty much everything you could want in a romantic interest.

It’s pretty obvious from the moment you meet him that he’s going to be the romantic interest (so this isn’t really a spoiler). I was okay with that, because he’s freaking adorable. He does all the things.

✔ Romantic dates on the rooftops
✔ Cheesy, yet adorable dialogue
✔ Sad but mysterious backstory
✔ Big heart and just wants to help
✔ Gifts a not-quite-right craft made by hand
✔ Has all the logic that the main character seems to lack
… OMG, maybe he’s feeding off her logic! No? OK, then, carry on.

❧ There’s a “reveal” about halfway through the book, and it’s slow up until then and Naya is an unbearable MC … but after that? Phew, something was kicked into drive and things took off.

I feel like I keep saying this with books recently, but the first 50% of the book? Eh. Most of my sticking points come from this part. It’s horribly predictable. Where it’s heading is obvious. I just ended up frustrated. After that, though?

The characters changed and felt more genuine, stuff was going down, there was blood and conspiracy and all the sorts of things I was hoping to find in this book.

So it took a while to get there, but in the end, it was worth it.

❧ The way necromancy is handled in this is really interesting, and I loved reading about it.

The previously deceased fall into two categories: reanimated bodies and wraiths. Wraiths technically aren’t corporeal, or they have the ability not to be, and the soul is bound to a few bones with runes carved into them.

In order to accomplish this, necromancers sing to attract the souls, and it’s possible for souls to resist the song. This part wasn’t entirely broached in this book, so I suspect it’ll come into play in future books.

I came here for the necromancy, and I wasn’t disappointed, especially with the moral issues and complications that arise from reanimating the dead.

Since Naya is a Tamiran, Necromancy is a disgrace to her people, but she can’t change what she is at this point. Seeing the two cultures clash and the moral debate about exactly how “human” wraiths and reanimated people are was everything I had hoped for.

❧ Aside from Corten, and maybe end-book Naya, I didn’t really feel like I connected to any of the characters.

They sort of just came and went. I hardly even noticed they were gone. Sometimes, I wished they were gone. I really read books for the characters, so this was a little bit disappointing. I can forgive almost anything if I fall in love with the characters, but that just wasn’t here.

It felt like there was a whole cast of characters that were randomly dropped in scenes and yanked about, but I never really learned much about them or felt a reason to care about what happened to them.

Even Corten. There’s a lot about his past that is sort of just glossed over. I felt like a got a good glimpse of his character, but there’s so much about him that was simply hinted at and then never came up again. I also know very little about Naya’s father, but even less about her mother, and she’s the main character.

❧ Naya has to be probably the worst spy in the history of spies.

Which would be one thing if that were the point of her character, I guess? But she’s been trained to be a spy, or so we’ve been told, over and over. Yet, she questions nothing.

There are so many red flags in this book that, as a reader, had me yelling at the protagonist—you know, the trained spy.

Naya takes everything at face value, blindly, and rarely actually investigates something. The few times she does “look into” something, it’s superficial (ie. tailing Lucia, the necromancer, to find out what she’s up to, but then once Naya finds out that obviously something bigger that she doesn’t know about is going on, the scene just ends and she asks no more questions).

❧ The “reveal” about halfway through the book was so painfully obvious right from the start, and the red flags were everywhere.

Yet, for some reason, Naya couldn’t figure it out? Maybe she’s colorblind. I wouldn’t know how to react to a gray flag, either. What does it mean?

Her cluelessness drove me crazy, because it’s right there. All she has to do is ask the question. Not even the hard one, even though we already know the answer is 42. The easy questions! Yet, she doesn’t.

I increasingly became frustrated that things were teased as something not quite adding up, and I kept wanting that to become significant … or, at the very least, for Naya to start thinking, hey, what’s going on here?

I felt like the person yelling in the middle of a horror movie to not open the door. Which we all know they do anyway. Characters never listen. Tsk.

❧ The whole book took place in Ceramor, which means I got a pretty good glimpse of that, but the world-building otherwise is fairly lacking.

Even though Naya is from Talmira, I didn’t feel like I got a good sense of her homeland or her people (aside from the fact that they hate necromancy, obviously, and consider it an abomination). I didn’t feel particularly immersed in this world and had trouble picturing the whole thing. There’s a lot of history between the different countries, too, and mentions of different political things (wars, treaties, leaders, etc) that didn’t completely add up to form a big picture by the end.

❧ There’s an LGBT relationship that’s sort of obvious early on, but the reason they have to keep it hushed is just weak, in my opinion.

Basically, it goes back to the whole be fruitful and multiply sort of concept, and homosexuals can’t do that, so shame on those who would be so selfish!

I’ve seen this sort of idea used quite a few times, and it drives me crazy. It’s a huge pet peeve.

This opens a can of worms because what happens to those who can’t have kids? Or those who simply don’t want them?

Every time I’ve seen this, it feels like a weak replacement for religion as a reason to explain a stigma around homosexuality. But as a person whose ability to produce further offspring is currently in question, the idea that two people can be together solely for the purpose of reproducing annoys the crap out of me.

As a side note, if someone writes a dystopian where relationships are legitimately all about reproducing and a hetero sterile couple runs off to join a band of outlaws to avoid persecution and befriends a gay/transgender couple … I would probably read the crap out of this.

Bonus points if there’s a hetero couple there that could technically have kids, but they’d really rather just live as outlaws than deal with that nonsense, thanks.

If you could be resurrected with necromancy and be a wraith, would you?!