Oath Taker

I am retroactively picking this series up having discovered Audrey Grey through her later series: Evermore Academy, which I thoroughly enjoyed.

In Oath Taker, we follow the journey of Haven, our female main character, and a band of immortal protagonists who are seeking to save Prince Bellamy, the Crown Prince of one of the last mortal kingdoms, who was taken by a very dark force...

My overarching feeling towards the book is one of intrigue and excitement for what comes next in the series. Oath Taker certainly gets the series off to a good start, and lays the foundation for what could be a very interesting series of twists and turns, with a tantalizing struggle between light and dark seemingly on the cards as well as the romance sub plots hinted at which are almost certainly likely to come to a head as the story progresses.

I personally felt the world building elements of this book were a stand-out strength, and one I've come to expect from Grey whose previous books I've enjoyed shared the same trait. The author does an excellent job of painting the picture of an immersive and complex world, full of danger, intrigue and plentiful mythological elements to draw and maintain your interest, which expands as you progress through the book.

While I see the complexity of the world as a strength broadly, I also felt a little overwhelmed at times as there's just SO much to learn, and not all of it is particularly well demonstrated and explained at points. I frequently found myself reaching for the world map and glossary sections to try and piece together elements of my understanding, as I felt like I was missing some understanding just by reading the prose. The magic system in particular, specifically how runes and rune stones were used, who could use them and how and why they were important all felt confusing for me at first, particularly when at the beginning it was made clear that mortals weren't able to use magic then suddenly magic was being invoked through the carving of runes by our MC, as apparently some runic engravings were possible to use, some were off limits and some were just intrinsic to certain races. It was hard to keep up with and it felt there was just so much to learn in relatively short periods of time as story progression was rather fast-paced.

I'm a fan overall of Grey's writing style where she has characters take common words from the universe she creates and has them mutter them as expletives during moments of frustration or exasperation. With that said, this added to my confusion on a couple of occasions at first when attempting to wrap my brain around the magical system of runes, particularly as "Runes!" was one such word that some characters seemed to yell out sometimes!

The characters' relationships to each other and how they all came into being in their current states was also a lot to understand and take on board at the pace it was being delivered; some characters' backstories weren't even fleshed out to the point where it all makes sense yet, and the first book definitely reads like the first book in a series where a lot of aspects will be revealed over time and make things retroactively make a little more sense, hopefully.

I was also a little disappointed by the ending, since nothing was actually resolved and it was clear this book was not designed to be a stand-alone story unto itself, but rather the first part of a story which will continue with the future books in the series. I am very much intending to continue this series to find out more, but still I am of the opinion that a book should be a complete story that is able to stand on its own merit, which isn't the case with Oath Taker because it's incomplete and the ending is just a lead-in to the next book.

Overall though, I found this to be a high fantasy story well worth investing in as the story and world are certainly interesting and intriguing enough. I am excited to continue on with book 2 of the series: Curse Breaker and the twists, turns and hopefully character progression that is to follow!