I love Lucky Charms. It’s a great cereal. When I was younger, I used to eat around the marshmallows so that I could eat them all at the end. It was a reward for finishing the more boring parts first. It made eating it fun. And then I grew up and between the stress of a job in a highly technical field, a mortgage, student and car loans, yard work, house work, etc, etc, that delayed satisfaction has lost its appeal.So I now have this endearing (my fiancé claims annoying) little habit of eating the marshmallows straight out of the box when I’m stressed out. It took him a while to realize what was happening because he hadn’t eaten the cereal since he was a kid and he figured that they were putting fewer marshmallows in it, in an attempt to make it healthier. Then one day he was the first one to open the box and things started to add up.His big “Ah-ha!” moment came when he found me half-drunk after an especially stressful week at work, sitting in the dark on our pantry floor with my hand stuck in the box. The crumbs on my shirt told him all he needed to know.What I'm trying to say is that most books I pick up are like boxes of Lucky Charms. I never know if some a-hole has gone through them first and removed all the good parts. Fantasy seems to be the exception to this rule for me. I consistently enjoy it more than any other genre, and for that reason I keep coming back to it.This series is a perfect example of why. It has a unique and incredibly built world, fantastic characterization, gorgeous writing, underdog MCs, ruthless villains, some potential game changers lingering on the sidelines, power struggles, impossible odds, epic battles, the list goes on and on.Reading this book was like opening a box of Lucky Charms to find that someone had replaced all the crap I didn’t want with MORE MARSHMALLOWS. And I don't mean that this series was sugary sweet. It wasn't. It was intricate and dark, detailed and daring. What I'm trying to say is that this series was frigging awesome.If you’re a fantasy fangirl or boy you should totally pick it up. If you’re not, you should still totally pick it up because it’s a wonderful example of the magic that this genre has to offer. I cannot wait to see where Arenson takes this series.