Book Review: A Jewel Bright Sea by Claire O’Dell

A story in O’Dell’s world of River of Souls, but starting a different series (Mage and Empire) that combines threads of romance, adventure, and mystery. You get plunged into the world with its rich geography, history, and politics pretty quickly, so it may help to have read other books set in the world to have a solid grounding. For some reason I didn’t love it as deeply as I did the River of Souls series and I’m not entirely sure why. I think I felt too off-balance with regard to where the plot was going and following all the twists and turns, betrayals and allegiances. O’Dell does fabulous world-building and I enjoyed exploring new aspects of that, but didn’t quite connect with the protagonist as much as I hoped to.