Hawksong by Amelia Atwater-Rhodes

Spoiler Free Reread Review

I'm usually not a fan of Romance and Hawksong is, first and foremost, an Enemies-to-Lovers Romance. However, Hawksong spends a lot more time in the realm of introspection than it does anywhere else, so it doesn't exactly feel like a Romance to me... if that makes any sense. We spend most of the book in Danica's head and she's not super focused on the Romance aspects of her life. She's definitely more concerned with simply stopping a war and keeping it stopped than she is on whether or not her love-interests are interested. Again... if I'm not making sense about this, it's probably because what I'm trying to say is mixed up in my own head.

Anyway, I like Danica as a character. She honestly comes across more Ace to me than anything else. Again, more concerned with stopping a war than the romantic side of things. This also might be because of the "Avian Reserve" aspect of her life sort of saps the outward manifestations of her emotional states. That's a fun bit of world-building that's brought to the fore once she spends more time with Zane among the Serpiente.

I also quite like how the world-building is done through how the people behave, rather than just their surroundings. The Avian Shapeshifters bottle up their emotions and act "properly" rather than, like the Serpents, be very open in thought and deed. I don't know how true this is, as the Hawk's Keep isn't really described in terms of building materials, but I've always kind of envisioned it as made of wood and plaster in contrast to the Serpiente's palace of stone. Not sure why that is, but yeah... Contrasts.

It's also really interesting how these writ-large Shapeshifter societies and kingdoms eventually get whittled down when moving from this series to the main Nyeusigrube series. Rise and fall of civilizations, I suppose. Just something fun to think about when reading and rereading these series.