My feelings on this book are very conflicted. To his credit, Brett has crafted wonderful characters that are easily likable and thrown them into a world with interesting mythology and conflicts. However, this didn't feel like a whole book to me. The entire book is essentially an origin story, following our three protagonists from as young as 3 in Rojer's case to adulthood (or nearly so). As a result, I often found myself frustrated to get to the POINT of the book rather than slogging through all the terrible things these characters must endure. To be fair, I never really felt bored. The writing itself is wonderful, and I quickly grew to love the characters. Leesha became one of my favorite female protagonists I've read in awhile. Through the first half of the book, I was frustrated that I didn't feel like I'd gotten to the meat of the story yet, but I was still mostly enjoying myself. Unfortunately, it started to fall away in the second half. 
 While we've spent half the book at this point in a thoroughly detailed narrative of Arlen's life, we suddenly skip over huge, essential chunks of his story. The Arlen of part 4 is unrecognizable, and I couldn't find a way to reconcile what I knew of him with what he became. (view spoiler)[ To make matters worse, our female protagonist, who has spent 27 years maintaining her virginity, is brutally raped by THREE men AND THEN willingly sleeps with a man she just met less than a week later. (hide spoiler)] Basically, my head was saying "no, no, no, no, no" through most of the last quarter of the book. I think I would have preferred to have less insight into their past and more mystery if we aren't going to get to see the whole picture. At the end, I felt like I should only be maybe halfway through the book since honestly, not much had happened. A book, even if it is part of a larger series, should be able to stand on its own as a solid piece of work, and this simply did not. 
 To add to my frustrations were the obvious comparisons to "our world," complete with a stereotypical Middle-Eastern culture in the sandy south. There were enough tie-ins that I felt like the author probably did it with a purpose in mind, but it ended up coming across as a lack of creativity. The majority of character names were also simply common names spelled strangely (Rojer, Jizelle, Mairy, Steave, etc). Every time a new character was introduced, it seemed to jerk me out of the book more than it would have if he had just spelled them Roger, Giselle, Mary, or Steve. 
 All that complaining done, I still have hopes for the series and plan to read book 2. I do really like the characters, and that will typically keep me reading despite other issues.