When the Moon Hatched: Potentially unintelligible but with unexplored potential

Author: Sarah A. Parker

Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️

This book had distinct series-setup vibes.

In this story, we follow Raeve, an assassin living in an evil kingdom, working with a group of rebels to bring down the evil king. Although this is by no means an original premise, I will say that I enjoyed the world the author built, and while it wasn’t jaw-droppingly unique, it felt relatively well fleshed-out and real.

Unfortunately, the plot dragged a bit, hampered by the overindulgent writing.

I would fit this book squarely in the romantasy category as, although the beginning of the book starts with an epic quest for vengeance, the middle becomes a game of cat-and-mouse between Raeve and the love interest, Kaan.

I do have to say, despite the fact that the overwriting made reading this book feel like wading waist-deep through mud (so many metaphors, a hundred pages of useless crap could have been cut out of this 600+ page book), something about the pining hero saved it for me. I won’t say too much more to avoid spoilers, but the devotion we got from Kaan was top notch and kept me going through the confusing prose and the unnecessary extra POVs.

This book felt like something that could have used a few more passes from an editor to trim out some of the unnecessary prose and shorten a book in which, when I think back to it, not a lot happened. This book gave distinct vibes of being there specifically to set up the rest of the series in which we will have more fantasy action, so I’m hopeful that the next one will be both more engaging and concisely-worded.