Book Review: Where Oceans Burn by Casey L. Bond

Taking full advantage of my Kindle Unlimited membership, I decided to pick up Casey L. Bond's Where Oceans Burn duology. You can find my spoiler-filled review below, but I'm going to tell you about the book first since I highly recommend it.

About the Book:

With these three virtues, we shall rise. With these three, we shall conquer.

Truth. Honor. Blood.

To my people, the sky-reigning Empyreans, Intention Day is sacred... To me, it’s the day my carefully crafted lie crumbles and my truth gives way to my ruin. The intense power surging through my veins is revealed, immediately coveted by those eager to exploit me for what they deem a greater good. If they have their way, the future I long for will be ripped away. But I am a warrior born to fly. To fight. Not to be caged and controlled.

The great scale of the goddess Neera has tipped out of my favor. The pans teeter between weighty punishment and deadly opportunity. My choices? Capture my most formidable enemy before next Intention Day, or forfeit my wings.

But life’s loftiest plans are often a breath away from disaster, and tragedy strikes as unpredictably as a bolt of lightning. When I find myself at the mercy of my greatest enemy, the terror known as the Shark of the Sea, the monster who killed the person I loved most, I accept my fate. My death. But the Shark does not lash out in revenge for all I’ve done. He tells me his true name is Crest. And while he calls me a Scourge, he honors his orders to guard me.

Forced together, Crest reveals that the truth only exists in the place between our perspectives and shares his hope to garner peace before the land is further soaked with the blood of sky and sea. The longer I am among his kind, the more I wonder if he might be right. Could an alliance be the salvation of both our peoples?

I am Elira, great Scourge of the Sky.

He is Crest, cunning Shark of the Sea.

Together... we could be unstoppable.

Where Oceans Burn is perfect for fans of enemies-to-lovers fantasy romance, Holly Black's The Cruel Prince, Sarah J. Maas's Throne of Glass, Elisa Kova's Married to Magic series, and Romeo and Juliet retellings...

Available on Kindle Unlimited

Find it on Goodreads

About Casey: 

RONE Award-winning author Casey Bond lives on a rural farm in West Virginia with her husband and their two beautiful daughters. She writes phoenixes – gloriously flawed and morally gray characters that fiercely rise from the ashes of their circumstances.

Worldbuilding is one of her favorite pastimes. She thinks thunderstorms are better than coffee and that watching a meteor shower is the closest thing to magic you might ever see. She’s a firm believer that every amazing book needs a world you want to wrap yourself in, a character you want to win, and a love you would fight for.

Casey is the author of When Wishes Bleed, Gravebriar, House of Eclipses, and Where Oceans Burn.

@authorcaseybond on social media sites.

My Review:

Warning: Spoilers ahead!

To say Casey Bond has a talent for building unique and immersive fantasy worlds filled with complex characters and stories that have layers seamlessly woven together simply doesn’t do her justice. It’s all true, of course, but there’s so much more than I could even begin to describe.

She created a world with her own races, one ruling the skies and one ruling the land and seas, two vastly different gods, and different values between the two. They’ve been waging war on one another since the first souls were breathed into life by their gods, and though the gods are two sides to the same coin essentially, you can’t possibly fathom how they could possibly live in harmony with the wide chasm of differences and painful history between them.

Elira is the ultimate warrior of the sky people. She’s powerful. She’s strong. And she doesn’t let emotions plague her or sway her. Until she loses her best friend and her secrets are revealed to her people—secrets that mean giving up her life as a warrior and being put in a position that although is supposedly revered, is little more than a brood mare. Faced with her fate and her grief, we start to see the chinks in her armor. Her path and her growth all feel so natural. She is the hardened heroine, but she’s surrounded by others who are just as hard. It’s their way. To see her break out of that and her first tears fall, I found myself crying with her. The scene with the arrows absolutely wrecked me.

The slow burn between Elira and Crest was really well done. I didn’t know how that was going to play out in a believable way, but it did. There’s so much hatred based on misunderstandings but also from their actions as warriors. But there’s also begrudging respect since they are the best of the best of their kind. They never come out and say they respect each other, but you see it from the start with how they view each other as threats. When neither does what the other expects, you see that respect grow. Then you see it start to bloom to admiration as they begin to open up to one another.

I also have to applaud the plot twist with Aderyn. Did I guess she was alive? Yes. Did I see her connection to Elira and the General, or her warning Crest’s people against Elira? Absolutely not. Oof. My heart broke with Elira all over again. To have the person who cracked open her heart be someone who sees her just as much as the Scourge as the families of the people she killed? Devastating doesn’t cover it.

I’m about to dive into book 2 because I really can’t wait to see Elira take down the Elders and Soraya. Judging from what I’ve seen of Casey’s storytelling abilities, I know it’s gonna be epic!