Second Book Syndrome who?

Pacat seems to have dedicated their professional career to eliminate people's inherent mistrust of sequels first with Prince Gambit and now this.

This deserves five stars for the backstory/world-building alone and a perfect hundred on the angst scale. That ending destroyed me.

Like the last, it took me over a hundred pages to really get into this book and once again, I'm glad that I trusted the process: I absolutely loved the character dynamics and the wild plot twists. The narrative was beautiful as well; every few pages, I seemed to stumble over a line that distracted me from the plot.

“He suited the sunset, as if he was part of the light that was slipping from the world.”

Again: beautiful. (I think I'm more in love with the thought of this book than the book itself 🙈)

There is just something that is charmingly forlorn and almost romantic about the very concept of a forgotten world and the few who remember: the ancient regrets, the loneliness, and the frustration of waking up in a body that is not your own in a world that had forgotten. This series has so much potential and this book reignited my hopes for it.

Though I would have been happier if less of the word count was invested in describing how good-looking James and Cyprian were and barring the prospective moral land mine of free will which sounds like the next book's problem, I cannot wait for book 3.