Bilquis, Billie for short, has a bloody past and the promise of a bloody future. Not by her own choice. She does not want to be part of the Templar Knights and frankly, I don’t blame her. The people around her, from her father to all the other not so pleasant Knights, with one or two exceptions, are frankly so entrenched in old prejudices and stereotypes – they are so singular minded that to them their vocation has become their life. Their fight has spread its insidious fingers until it has rouged all aspects of their daily life – and Billie’s father in particular, expects her to immerse herself in the fight with as much passion and ardour as he does. Sacrificing whatever semblance of normalcy she has worked hard to retain. I’m not going to lie. Billie’s father is unpleasant, unkind and cruel and even the lame justification of his actions at the end does not make it better. Chadda makes me hate the man and I am not willing to give up my dislike of him in the end.Billie is an interesting character. One who retains a lot of potential for development in future installments of the series. She occupies an interesting position, standing as she is and being what she is, in the middle of two distinct cultures. I really like how Chadda interpreted all three Abrahamic religions and instead of pitting them against each other, he worked them into his mythology so they served his story instead of unwinding it.The romance bit is…well, I’m not really too fond of the entire debacle that is Billie’s love life. She makes bad decisions and then compounds them by making worse ones. Not a good thing. And another thing I didn’t really like was how the one with true power was Billie’s friend who incidentally is a guy. She’s the hero of the story, yea? So…give her some more agency than just knife wielding abilities. I’m probably protesting too much but this was because I was invested in the character.I think that the novel could have done with more building up to the actual battles than having fights left right and center. It felt like the climax conflict every other scene and after a while, it got exhausting to read. As a reader, I prefer it when the author builds anticipation, creates atmosphere and then fine tunes it before giving us what would be a battle of epic proportions.The ending is interesting. There’s a certain sense of detachment to the whole event – a sense of remoteness that accompanied the ending that clung despite the obvious tragedy. I look forward to the next book in the series simply because it’ll be a pleasure seeing Billie grow as a protagonist.
