Gideon the Ninth meets the Game of Thrones White Walkers in this dark young adult fantasy about a disgraced ghost-fighting warrior who must journey into a haunted wasteland to rescue a kidnapped prince.

Ready your blade. Defeat the undead.
In the Dominions, the dead linger, violent and unpredictable, unless a bonesmith severs the ghost from its earthly remains. For bonesmith Wren, becoming a valkyr—a ghost-fighting warrior—is a chance to solidify her place in the noble House of Bone and impress her frequently absent father. But when sabotage causes Wren to fail her qualifying trial, she is banished to the Border Wall, the last line of defense against a wasteland called the Breach where the vicious dead roam unchecked.
Determined to reclaim her family’s respect, Wren gets her chance when a House of Gold prince is kidnapped and taken beyond the Wall. To prove she has what it takes to be a valkyr, Wren vows to cross the Breach and rescue the prince. But to do so, she’s forced into an uneasy alliance with one of the kidnappers—a fierce ironsmith called Julian from the exiled House of Iron, the very people who caused the Breach in the first place…and the House of Bone’s sworn enemy.
As they travel, Wren and Julian spend as much time fighting each other as they do the undead, but when they discover there’s more behind the kidnapping than either of them knew, they’ll need to work together to combat the real a dark alliance that is brewing between the living and the undead.

As soon as I heard the announcement for this book, I knew I needed it more than anything. Necromancy!! Fighting to prove yourself after betrayal!! Hints of enemies/rivals to lovers!! By an author I love!! I mean come on, it sounds incredible just from that right? AND THEN!! The cover reveal happened and omggg it’s epic and beautiful, and by my favorite cover artist (Tommy Arnold). And the fact that he also did the covers for the Locked Tomb series? Yes. I’m 10000% in.

A friend was kind enough to send me an ARC of it, and the publisher actually sent me one as well! So thank you friend, and thank you Simon & Schuster! Now let’s get into the actual review part haha. Just so you know, this will be a lot of me gushing about all the different things I loved. This book really hit the spot for me, and it is definitely a new favorite.

After her mother dies in an accident, sixteen-year-old Bree Matthews wants nothing to do with her family memories or childhood home. A residential program for bright high schoolers at UNC–Chapel Hill seems like the perfect escape—until Bree witnesses a magical attack her very first night on campus.
A flying demon feeding on human energies.
A secret society of so called “Legendborn” students that hunt the creatures down.
And a mysterious teenage mage who calls himself a “Merlin” and who attempts—and fails—to wipe Bree’s memory of everything she saw.
The mage’s failure unlocks Bree’s own unique magic and a buried memory with a hidden connection: the night her mother died, another Merlin was at the hospital. Now that Bree knows there’s more to her mother’s death than what’s on the police report, she’ll do whatever it takes to find out the truth, even if that means infiltrating the Legendborn as one of their initiates.
She recruits Nick, a self-exiled Legendborn with his own grudge against the group, and their reluctant partnership pulls them deeper into the society’s secrets—and closer to each other. But when the Legendborn reveal themselves as the descendants of King Arthur’s knights and explain that a magical war is coming, Bree has to decide how far she’ll go for the truth and whether she should use her magic to take the society down—or join the fight.

I feel like it has been SOOOO long since I fell this in love with a YA fantasy book. But omg you GUYS!!! This book is so good!!! I had seen a bunch of my bookstagram friends reading and loving it, so I was expecting to like it as well. But I didn’t know JUST how great it would be.