I'm honestly not entirely sure how I feel about this one. I started out horrified by the main character's complete tone-deafness when it came to slavery; her belief that it was bad clashed with the way she treated slaves and didn't really see them as people. I'm not thrilled that it took the tables being turned and her being taken prisoner and *barely* treated like a slave to truly understand the plight of the people her government had overrun and enslaved. I also barely felt the romance; the characters were on such unequal footing and barely knew each other, so it was all chemistry and the author shoving them together, not organic attraction-respect-love. 
 On the other hand, the worldbuilding was really interesting, and while I had no intention of continuing the series by about halfway through the book, when I hit the end that intention flipped. I'll probably pick up the next book at some point because I really want to see what happens next--but primarily for the politics, not for the romance.