At twenty years old, Elowyn leaves home to attend school to learn how best to use the powers she was born with. She gains the notice of the realm’s tyrant king. Her only hope of escaping the king’s clutches remains with Draitheon, a warrior with darkfire powers, and quite possibly the only person the king fears.

Darkfire of Caerwynfael is a dark fantasy full of magic and political unrest. I really enjoyed the story as a whole. The main plot points and the direction of the story were great. I especially loved the side characters. They brought some humor to an otherwise serious storyline.

Although I liked this story as a whole, I had a hard time enjoying the book. Honestly, I was confused often while reading. There were so many moments where I thought, “wait, what?” and had to back up and reread in an attempt to make sense of what was happening. And still, things didn’t make sense. I was easily lost in transitions between paragraphs. It felt like information was missing. It didn’t flow. There were also many sentences that just didn’t make sense. This was an ARC, so there is a chance that sentences could be reworded.

There were also quite a few characters mentioned who I didn’t recognize throughout the story. I’m not sure if there were too many for me to keep straight, or if there was so little of them that I didn’t remember their previous moments in the book. Maybe I was just missing it?

On one hand, I’ll argue that this book was a little long winded. It’s 576 pages, which is great. I don’t mind a long book. But I felt like there were too many words describing things that didn’t really help the overall story. On the other hand, I’m going to say that I think I could have used a little more world building or explanation of the world’s magic system. Towards the end of the book, I kept having moments where I was surprised with the abilities some characters had with their powers. I thought, “Wait, she can do that? Has she always been able to do that?” When I finished the book, I realized there was an appendix at the end explaining characters and their abilities/powers. A more clear explanation of their powers within the story would have gone a long way for me.