2.5/5 
 Wavered between giving this two or three stars and finally decided on rounding down to two because there was more stuff I disliked than liked. 
 The writing in this drove me crazy! It felt like every sentence had to contain a simile or metaphor. Flowery language abounded! Purple prose dominated! Now don't get me wrong, I can get into beautiful descriptive writing, but here is just felt forced and overwrought. And that was a shame because there were some beautiful lines in this, but they were sadly outnumbered by others desperately trying to be profound. 
 "'I see no secrets in your gaze,' I said. I see only night and smoke, dreams and glass, embers and wings. And I would not have you any other way." 
 What does that even mean? I asked myself that question a lot during this book. 
 All this descriptive language meant that we never got clear explanations, which we definitely could have used. I really had to pay close attention to figure out what that author was trying to get across sometimes. But maybe that was just me being dumb. 
 The characters were pretty flat, and I actually stared to dislike Maya based on the memories we are shone in the end of the book. 
 As for the world building, it was fairly lacking. At first it seemed like we were going to be getting a wonderful and different fantasy setting. And then the explanations stopped. Why are all the countries at war with one another? How does Maya suddenly have magic? Did she have it before coming to Akaran and not know? How does it work? How did Amar become king of Akaran? How does his kingdom work? I know there's some kind of "curse" so they can't talk about all that stuff, but I'm going to call BS on that. 
 I will defend this book against accusations of "insta-love." Frankly it didn't bother me that Amar was super into Maya the moment they meet. I think that this is because it's fairly obvious that she's the reincarnation of his love. But this leads to another issue I have with the book. The major revelations about Maya and Amar are very obvious so that pesky "curse" is pretty useless. We can totally see where this is going. No need to withhold information.