Starting out this book held so much potential. The first few pages had me sold and I was sure that I had found my next great read. Well, boy was I sure disillusioned! A common theme that became increasingly obvious was the lack of diversity. Which is already one of my biggest peeves, when it comes to modern fiction. It's 2019 at this point it is highly unrealistic that every character is heterosexual! Like come on now, it's highly unbelievable that given all the cultures within the book; that everyone is straight. Plus the blatant way the author has to point out that their straight is even more puzzling, as to why that is needed.
While there were some points within the stories that I enjoyed, such as learning about each character's background and the section with the Sea Witches and the Cut-Queen. The brief backstory is all we as the reader get, and there's not a lot more depth than that. I wanted to see more than just the base of what we got. A lot of the characters were just very bland, it feels like there was little to no character development. The pacing of the story was rather slow, but when it came to the action scenes everything was over too quickly and came too easily for the characters. Plus it takes half the book to get to the actual plot which is wrapped up just as quickly as all the rest of the scenes. I spent half of the book being so done with it all, but I was already that far along so I didn't want to drop it. By the end of it, I was just relieved to be done with it, and that is not a fun feeling upon finishing a book.