This was probably way over-hyped to me, as I went in expecting a lot more than I got. I really liked the world-building and the ambitious scope of the novel, and the beginning was promising. I even really appreciated Karou's relationships with charming supporting characters like Zuzanna and Issa and Brimstone (Brimstone! Brimstoneeeee) but then it all gets high-jacked by the epic love story of Karou and Akiva. Which was way more than a little annoying. I mean, even the (view spoiler)[death of Karou's family (hide spoiler)] is worked out in the context of their epic love. Ugh. Second half of the novel, I was skimming and waiting for the good parts about the war, or even the creepy White Wolf, or Brimstone. 
 A note on the writing style, Laini Taylor is definitely a promising writer, but she seems to get carried away with her own prose sometimes. There were some five-dollar words that made me stop and go for the Kindle dictionary, and I don't have that small of a vocabulary (...I think). Anyway, closed the book fairly ambivalent about returning for the sequel.