Okay, I'm kind of pissed right now because goodreads couldn't save my review and I don't know why, since it was a pretty normal review. Nevertheless, that means all my quotes are lost, so I'll just give you a basic description of my feelings for this book. 
 The Basics 
 A unique high fantasy book that focuses on friendship rather than romance and overpowers the tropes in the end. 
 Trope check 
 *MC is special 
 *elemental magic 
 *religious order against magic 
 *hate-to-love romance 
 *Europe-based, almost all-white high fantasy 
 "Full" review 
 I liked this one for the most part. My main complaints are that in the beginning they just throw names at you and that the romance subplot was badly done hate-to-instalove where they start out hating and complaining about each other and then - boom! - they fall in love once they reach a certain place, and describe the love interest's wrists, among other things. 
 She was vastly different from the women of his homeland. Her hair was the color of sand, her eyes the color of the sea. 
 I see nothing but the candle in the mirror, what do you see? 
 Oh wait, the candle in the mirror is hot. 
 He had stubble on his chin, on his jaw, and around the curve of his lips. The triangle between his brows was creased in, but not with a frown... It was the hollow of Merik's throat, though, that grabbed her attention - the pulse that she saw fluttering there 
 If you didn't figure it out, it annoys me when authors have characters describe random body parts of their love interest's. Thankfully, Dennard threw the romance to the back burner, and perhaps she even knew she wasn't that good at making a romance. 
 There were also two main things I liked. Firstly, the villain was a complex character with needs and priorities other than getting rid of the main characters for no good reason. Most villains only have redeeming qualities because they're hot (looks at Darkling), but Aeduan isn't all bad, merely after money, and I hope he gets more developed in the coming books. 
 Secondly, I liked how the friendship was complex. Tsarina, Dreaming Anastasia and even The Winner's Curse all have shallow sidekick best friends you can't imagine the main character seeing anything in. Often they're LGBT/racial minority/general misfit stereotypes. Thankfully, that was not the case here. Both friends have jobs to help each other in different ways and they're both complex characters. In this book, one also finds passages like this: 
 Rain started to fall. A gentle whisper on Safi's skin that should have soothed, but felt like acid instead. Safi was falling into herself. The world was pulsing at her. 
 Thus, though I'm not wholly torn apart by the ending, I will take the sequel with open arms when it comes.