An engaging story with really good audiobook narrators. The audiobook app unfortunately had this categorized as romance, which is why I was left feeling quite unsatisfied. I did some research and apparently the second book is romance, which could explain the situation. If I'd picked this up as  a dark fantasy book with a romantic subplot, I probably wouldn't have been disappointed. So for other romance seekers beware: this can not even be categorized as slow burn in my opinion, since the romance is so sporadic and even crudely put on hold for the second half of the book in order for the development of other, I can only assume important in the future, characters and worldbuilding.

The world in this book is cruel, grim and bleak, but the author manages to embed a hopeful vibe, without it being too unbelievable. Something similar to N.K. Jemisin's The Broken Earth trilogy, but not as masterful.

The plot and setting does do an unexpected switch halfway from a pure fantasy realm to modern day USA, with some cliché "alien first time on Earth"-moments. Pay attention to the blurb, which in hindsight is pretty telling. The heroine changes to this vigilante, which is okay I guess, but I probably wouldn't have picked this up if I'd known the change of setting. 

Warning for fellow audiobook -listeners: they switched narrators for the third book in the series and based on the reviews it's bad.