I was lucky enough to come upon this book through Candace’s Book Tours and am so happy I decided I wanted to take part in its review tour. This book is a layered masterpiece of epic fantasy that focuses on two worlds that are ending. The book follows a cast of character in these worlds as they try to come to terms with various political, emotional, and societal concerns while experiencing major world changing events like earthquakes and places just disappearing entirely.

Upon reading the synopsis it seems like you will be following Cor and Atesh, but in reality there is a huge cast in this book and each point of view is just as interesting as the last as the author builds this grand complex world and society. Cor is a human that is a victim or gender inequality and racial prejudice living in one world, while Atesh is a dragon scientist forced to work for the violent, vindictive dragoness emperor of his world. I found the political upheavals of both story lines multifaceted and their issues realistic though set in a fantasy world.

As for the other characters, we have the privilege of understanding the views of theses individuals in the human world: King’s wife, people of the Sea region, people in the Cave region, and people of the Marshlands. In the dragon world, there is a general, the emperor, some neighbors, and some art kids. It all seems kind of mish-mashed but it worked REALLY well.

I was partial to the dragon world – I found it faster paced than the human interactions and complications. (and dragons are cooler anyway, right?! YES!) I found myself speed reading through the human realm to get back to the dragon realm sooner and often you would get more about the humans than the dragons in a row, but most of the time they alternated.

Overall, this was an epic book, as it was supposed to be. I really adored the world building – it was SO good and the book brings up a lot of hardships society faces and I think that this could have a lot of feels for most readers. I know that I had them. ( )