Shaykitteh's World of Books

Raised in the drylands by an Earthmaker outcast, Astarti believes that she has no where to run and no hope. Leashed to Belos, she must carry out his demands, traveling through the Drift. To refuse him leads to punishment, possible death... and worse, the loss of her mind and soul.

When Astarti meets the Warden Logan, she realizes that the world is not as she always thought it was, and there are powers that she had never seen or imagined. Thrown into the conflict between the Drifter-King Heborian, the Eartmakers, and Belos, Astarti must fight to keep her life, sanity, and a forbidden love.

I really enjoyed this book. The characters are well developed with enough surprises so that you are constantly learning things even when you think you know who everyone is, though I was able to guess some of the history of the characters from the tidbits dropped early in the book. Overall, the plot is well written and the characters fit the world they're in. Astarti spends a good portion of the book really figuring out who she is, and I look forward to seeing what she can do in the next book. My own nitpick about this book is that it slowed down in the middle, but I was glad to see that the ending picked back up and completed the story with a bang.

NOTE: I received a copy of this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.