Sirscha Ashwyn comes from nothing, but she’s intent on becoming something. After years of training to become the queen’s next royal spy, her plans are derailed when shamans attack and kill her best friend Saengo.

And then Sirscha, somehow, restores Saengo to life.

Unveiled as the first soulguide in living memory, Sirscha is summoned to the domain of the Spider King. For centuries, he has used his influence over the Dead Wood—an ancient forest possessed by souls—to enforce peace between the kingdoms. Now, with the trees growing wild and untamed, only a soulguide can restrain them. As war looms, Sirscha must master her newly awakened abilities before the trees shatter the brittle peace, or worse, claim Saengo, the friend she would die for.

High fantasy is really not my genre so I didn't love this, but it was easy to get through and I liked that the main focus was the friendship between Sirscha and Saengo instead of a romance ( )

I don’t know what I wanted this book to be, but it wasn’t. The world building was beyond rich though, and I enjoyed the magic systems. Ill definitely read the sequel. ( )

Their souls remain trapped as well. The older the soul, the more a part of the Dead Wood they become until they are no more than wood, rot, and rage.

WHEW. This was a ton of worldbuilding crammed into a little book. And for once, that's the thing I have the most to say about.

For starters, it was impressive, and genuinely, fantastically creepy. Never has a forest spooked me so much since Uprooted, and I thought it never would again. Throw in some spider monsters and a castle (and a spider king god DAMN) tucked in the middle of all this mess and you've got yourself quite the atmosphere. The unapologetic dragons and wyverns and all the lizard-things in between was also great; I can hardly remember the last dragon I read about and I loved it.

When it comes to the magic, the kingdoms, and the especially the scores of magic-users, the guide at the start of the book is necessary, and though I liked all the details, it felt like epic 600-page fantasy crammed into the constraints of a 400-page YA drama, unable to stretch and really organically teach us. And so my main frustration, though I'm firmly calling this a "me" problem - most of the reveals and twists relied on the tiniest change of understanding or a shift in dictionary definition, when I hardly understood what was going on in the first place. All I had to do was just nod and follow along and pretend I didn't already "guess" the twist purely because I didn't understand the base concept enough. I also never felt like I knew what was happening in the plot - characters just went places and I followed, and again like an epic fantasy with more pages to spend, characters you thought had a set role or would pull their weight just...didn't, and were used far more subtly, though that's far from a flaw.

The imagination and the characters were fantastic, though. Theyen was outstanding in particular, and the turn Saengo and Sirscha's bond takes early on made me sure that I was in for something great.

I'd recommend this - and also recommend to myself that I do a reread eventually. ( )

Well, doesn't this just sound super freaking cool.