I should've saved myself the trouble and read some of the reviews before I picked up this book. How did something with at least a good amount of potential go so very wrong? 
 Do you like boring, two dimensional characters and worldbuilding? Do you like to read 300 pages that can be easily summarized in about three pages without losing any bit of tension, drama, or anything of interest because there is little to be found? Do you like the kind of copious amounts of insta-love, love triangles, and eyeroll-inducing descriptions that exemplify everything that is wrong with the YA genre? 
 If the answer is yes, for whatever strange reason, you've found the perfect book for you then. 
 For everyone else, for god's sake, save yourself the trouble and go read The Winner's Curse trilogy or something. I could give you twenty YA book recommendations off the top of my head that would be superior to this book in every way. 
 The second star is only because my reading experience actually did improve after the initial review I left below. I try to reserve the one star reviews for books that I actually loathe or don't even care to finish. And also, in the end, the book is set in Russia after all and has some of the historical charm that I was looking for. It just wasn't enough to make up for all the other disappointing aspects of the book. Even the mention of a Cinderella Bakery - which reminds me immediately of the one in San Francisco - could not make me like this book more. 
 I mean, really, just how many descriptions of super duper special Vika can you sit through? 
 "If there was ever a girl a man could fall in love without knowing, it would be Vika." 
 "But if any girl in the empire was bold enough to decline an invitation from the tsesarevich, it would likely be the lightning girl." 
 Yes, Vika is so awesome we need to be told about it over and over again, mostly through descriptions of how fearless and wonderful she is, rather than her actual actions. Kind of like how the book flap tells you right off the bat that she's "beautiful, whip-smart, imaginative" and the glowing adjectives just pile up from there. I mean, after just one look at her, we've got the tsesarevitch all worked up so that "a giddiness fluttered within him" over her, and lest we think he's just excited over finding out that magic exists and someone can call lightning, the author is quick to assure us that "he was interested in the girl for more than just her magic" right off the bat. 
 As for Nikolai, he's sooooo handsome that just one glimpse of his face turns Vika into a lovesick idiot mere pages after she first sees him. We get these wonderful descriptions: 1. "Goose bumps rose where his hand held her, even though there was a glove and a sleeve between them. Everything inside Vika quivered" 2. "she still buzzed from his touch" 3. She was "all tremble and ache inside" 
 This one glimpse of his uber powerfully "too beautiful" face happens fairly early in the book on page 75 and there goes all rationality. 
 But at least the author is fair in that Nikolai and Pavel fall into their own equally amusing instalove as soon as they see Vika. 
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 I really wanted to love this book but at 136 pages in, I have to confess that it's not holding my interest very well despite my love of all things Russian. I mean, I didn't expect much given the extremely generic storyline, but I figured the setting and the writing itself might make up for it. Unfortunately, no. 
 So far it seems like everything I will get out of this book, I've already gotten from the book flap. I mean, this is a lot of slow buildup that is not doing much in terms of character development or plot development. I also can't quite get over the huge plot holes such as the fact that Nikolai's cold and conniving mentor waited until the last possible moment to "teach" him how to kill...by conjuring up some dangerous animals in his room. Well, ok. She also trained him so relentlessly in preparation for victory but never mentioned that she expects him to do that by killing his opponent. Okay... Oh, and then there's Nikolai conveniently not telling Pavel about anything going on, giving him the perfect opportunity to fall in love with the girl at first sight and create possibly the most cliche love triangle of the YA genre, which is really saying something. 
 I'm starting to feel like this is another one of those poorly thought out YA novels with a plotline so obvious that it manages to cease being interesting when you're actually reading it. I mean, I understand the whole competition-to-the-death has been in fashion pretty much since The Hunger Games but Collins succeeded where so many of her imitators failed because she actually had some depth to her story and concepts. I shouldn't be a third of the way through the book and be able to summarize everything that's happened by reading the book flap to someone without losing anything of interest from the story. I'm already speed reading and if this book doesn't improve soon, I might not even bother skimming through to the end.