Song of Blood & Stone

2.5* Sad to say that this wasn't what I hoped it would be. It came mostly down to this book trying to be too much and in consequence lacking depth on any front. I'm still not sure what genre this book actually fits. It saw it tagged as YA Fantasy - which works for the mist part... but it's too steamy to really fit that age range. It could be Fantasy Romance - but then, the romance takes up not enough space, aside from the fact thta I found the romance too tropy and the sex scenes cringy. It's a bit Political Intrigue, a bit Military Fantsay and maybe Epic Fantsay, but again it simply didn't really hit the mark. Overall, I might have dnf'd this if I hadn't listened to it on audio and if I hadn't hoped it would be getting better towards the end. Which it slightly did, but not enough reach even the 3* mark. I read this to get a tase of Penelope's writing before "The Monsters We Defy" comes out this year. Now, I'm unsure about that one but we'll see, maybe... afterall there's probably a reason the author wrote that book under a different name (Leslye Penelope).