I loved the cover art, and the book had glowing reviews, but unfortunately the cover was the best thing about the book… The society is a patriarchal nightmare where men are obsessed with keeping their girls pure, lest they mysteriously start bleeding the golden blood that marks them as demonic. Our heroine, already looked down on for her dark skin, of course bleeds gold and is promptly punished for it … But wait, she is then whisked away to an all-female martial academy and taught by other women warriors to fight monsters… It’s all supremely unlikely and internally inconsistent, the plot really feels like it’s being made up as the author goes along, the villains are cartoonishly evil, and the grimdark violence (near-constant references to rape, beatings, and murder) is jarringly inconsistent with the extremely YA internal voice of the naive teen narrator.