A review by solly
Dauntless by Elisa A. Bonnin

4.0

This wasn't what I expected from the little I knew about it and I was mostly pleasantly surprised.

It's a standalone YA fantasy novel about two peoples and their conflict, which was pleasantly complex (there wasn't one overwhelmingly "good" or "bad" side at least) and had really cool worldbuilding (people living in cities in trees to protect themselves from beasts was already pretty cool but everything else was great as well).

The villain wasn't who I expected it to be at the start, and had interesting motivations even though they were pretty obviously bad once revealed.

The only thing I'd say was that this was more action-focused (and the actions scenes were pretty great!) than character-focused, which is more my thing, so the main relationships sometimes didn't feel developed enough for me, but I think for any readers that enjoy fast-paced books this'll be great. Also, the main couple is sapphic