Overall: ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Readability: 📖📖📖
Feels: 🦋🦋
Emotional Depth: 💔💔💔
Sexual Tension: ⚡⚡⚡
Romance: 💞💞💞
Sensuality: 💋💋💋 (Scenes were a bit too light and short for me)
Sex Scene Length: 🍑🍑🍑
Steam Scale (Number of Sex Scenes): 🔥🔥+ I have notes for 2 scenes but feel like I might have missed one? Not sure.
Humor: Not really
Perspective: First person only from the heroine
Cliffhanger: No
HEA/HFN: Yes
Epilogue: Yes
Format: read the e-book version through Kindle Unlimited

Should I read in order?
This is Hatton’s debut.

Basic plot:
General Truda starts to question the rules of her society when she meets a slave scheduled for death.

Give this a try if you want:
- fantasy romance
- tall elf heroine
- human hero
- strong themes of right the wrongs
- you’re okay with slavery, murder, and death as content warnings
- medium-ish steam – I only have notes on 2 steam but want to say there was one more towards the end? My KU subscription is up so I can’t check

Ages:
- Hero is 29, didn’t catch heroine

First line:
Today I was confident my sword would run red with the blood of our enemies.

My thoughts:
I really wanted to love this novel, because I think it had a really unique story line and goals for the heroine! But a few things ended up not working for me, just some personal preferences.

The biggest thing for me, was I felt like the hero and heroine were not together nearly enough. The first 30% of the book was a bit slow for me because I kept waiting for more interaction between the mains.

The steam was also a bit on the light side to me. I loved the actions in the scenes, but wanted more emotional pull (especially with how much they both had overcome to get to that point), and details. I think for me I just wanted them longer to be able to get those feelings in. Those that like open door sex but want to keep it light will enjoy this.

And we didn’t get any hero perspective and I always struggle with that and am sad.

I couldn’t help but think this world didn’t get quite it though, as women. 

They were oppressed by men, women discovered magic, and then they ended up taking over and changes things to suit their needs. But they are still oppressed in my opinion. The fact that they don’t have breeding autonomy is enough to showcase that. 

Overall, I think Rattan has some fabulous ideas going in this world and I’m really curious how she’s going to continue it in the next book. It was nice reading such a strong female lead, and really going through her change of perspective through the novel. The start is a touch slow, but then it really begins to pick up and there’s quite a bit of intrigue and action scenes for those that like that.

World Building

- It’s a requirement of the best warriors and strongest elves to pass their knowledge and skill to the next generation to ‘remain an unassailable race’ to they are made to have babies
- When you go to the breeder, you are given a potion for if you will have a boy (which is born a ‘Guan’ or a slave) or a female, who becomes an elf leader
- Slaves are not allowed to live past the age of 30 (our hero is 29)

Quotes/spoiler-y thoughts:

To show the beginning stance of elf women versus men (heroine reflects on the death of her slave)

I had never yelled at him or punished him, but I had also never been kind. I had never said thank you or given him a gift of gratitude. It was not our way. Men were beneath us, they were our slaves, born into our race of female elf warriors as servants. The histories told us that a long time ago we had been human, in a world of constant war because of men, with their natural inclination and tendencies towards violence, until a group of women discovered they could use magic. They rose together and killed all but a few of the men.
 

Content warnings:

- death of a favored slave
- lack of body autonomy – heroine is decreed it’s time for her to breed and she must go to a ‘breeder’ every other night for 3 months until pregnant. When she goes there, a man is chained to the wall, there to sexually serve her.
- mention of infanticide – before they controlled a fetus’s genetics, most male babies were killed at birth
- slaves are branded, killed at age 30 and whipped

Locations of kisses/intimate scenes:

 
31% - kiss
44% - kiss
63% - 🔥kisses, oral for her, her on top (it’s all fairly light)
72% - kisses
87% - 🔥BJ to wall sex (somewhat short)