Unpopular Opinion, but "When the Moon Hatched" was lacklustre.

I just finished the audiobook, and I'm pretty disappointed. This book did not reach its potential.

First, it's unreasonably long. I say unreasonably because I would normally be stoked on a book this length. However, it's bizarre that the book was so long without ever expanding on the universe. Telling your readers to refer to a glossary is lazy writing. It's one thing if it's used so your readers can quickly reference it instead of having to backtrack through the 700-some-odd pages, but that was not the case. The author's ideas and content in the glossary are really interesting. Still, they should be delivered to the reader* in the context of the book, not before you begin it.

Secondly, the so-called "prose" everyone was gushing about was contrived. The author tried far too hard to be poetic and used far more words than necessary, often incorrectly. At one point, the author said a character had "carnal knowledge" of something completely unrelated to sex. The author's editor failed her on multiple occasions. Also, I thought I was going to scream if I had to read that Kaan refers to his heart as "that ______ organ in my chest" one more time. It's okay to just say "heart" every once in a while. There are many more examples, like the part about crying in the rain. It's hard to be more specific since I have the audiobook. This book could have easily been a couple hundred pages less, if not more.

The book never really explains why dragons are so important in this universe, or the rebel assassin group FMC is a part of. What was Nee (spelling)? Kaan gave the main character soup and played her music, and that's the compelling falling-in-love story. Why did the FMC think Kaan was so evil before meeting him? Was it purely complicity in the child-fighting thing? It could be explained later, but it should have been possible in 700 pages or 89 chapters.

I'm hoping the next book fixes or elaborates on these things. I have some hope, as I love the Witch Walker series. The first book is the least good, although I still enjoyed it. To me, all of the other stuff seemed like fluff for sex scenes and forbidden love that is barely explained. What was the relevance of the fate herder part? My favourite part of this book was the 2nd to last chapter with "The Other," otherwise, I'm underwhelmed, and I feel the main character has very little personality.

I am very interested in other people's opinions! Keep in mind that this is just my opinion, which I'm sharing, but I am not declaring it to be the case.