From the cover:
"Sylvie has always known she deserves more. Out in the permanent twilight of the Dusklands, her guardians called her power to create illusions a curse. But Sylvie knows it gives her a place in Coeur d'Or, the palais of the Amber Empress and her highborn legacies.
So Sylvie sets off toward the Amber City, a glittering jewel under a sun that never sets, to take what is hers.
But her hope for a better life is quickly dimmed. The empress invites her in only as part of a wicked wager among her powerful courtiers. Sylvie must assume a new name, Mirage, and begin to navigate secretive social circles and deadly games of intrigue in order to claim her spot. Soon it becomes apparent that nothing is as it appears and no one, including her cruel yet captivating sponsor, Sunder, will answer her questions. As Mirage strives to assume what should be her rightful place, she'll have to consider whether it is worth the price she must pay."
Amber & Dusk reads like an outline of major plot points - lots of THINGS happen, but there isn't much in between to develop characters, build up to actions, or connect the reader to what is going on. Sylvie's journey starts off in a caravan, traveling from the Dusklands to Coeur d'Or because she deserves to be there! But...why? She has a legacy, whatever that means, but why does that lead to such a strong sense of entitlement?
After Sylvie makes it to Coeur d'Or, learns that life at the palais is nothing like she expected, and becomes Mirage her sense of entitlement holds strong. We get sporadic scenes of her training with her sponsors, which basically consists of her getting angry at them and not actually putting in the work she needs to to strengthen her legacy, interspersed with weird attempted-witty repartee between her and Sunder, and every couple of chapters something new and major happens out of nowhere, keeping the reader ping-ponging back and forth between weird, apropos of nothing, new developments.
Ultimately, the Big Revelation toward the end of the book was obvious from the first couple of chapters, the final showdown was lackluster, and at the end of the day while there are some great individual scenes in this book, as a whole it didn't work for me. Like Mirage's power, this book was mostly flash, not a lot of substance.
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