Twylla escaped her mother's faith of becoming a sin eater (someone who eats cadavers to allow their souls to move on). Instead, she is taken to a tower where she will serve the Queen as a Goddess Embodied. Every day she is given poison, which she then inflicts onto traitors through a touch of their skin. But when a new guard is appointed to her and begins to make her doubt her powers, Twylla will be forced to face her magical beliefs once and for all.
To be honest, I found Twylla too trusting at first, blindly accepting whatever the Queen asked of her. The first 150 pages were slow, as she explained lots of details about her working life at the castle and bits and pieces of her mom's work. None of this really mattered because we rarely got to see Twylla at work. Nor do we get to meet her mom. So eventually I begun to wonder what exactly I was reading. But then the whole book took a different course and turned into a romance tale about betrayal and forbidding love and cons. Lots of cons.
A great new series!