This really just felt like 300 pages of Filler, and 50-100 pages of plot.

the stuff that was good, was really good. The new characters were great (but I miss the old ones and we did not get enough of them) and the twists near the end have me optimistic for the finale... but that leads me to

I went into the series expecting it to be a duology and was pretty upset to find out its a trilogy. Not because trilogies are bad but because NOT EVERYTHING NEEDS TO BE A TRILOGY. this book could easily have been a few chapters in book 3 or just a bit of an exposition dump. It's severely struggling from Middle Book Syndrome and I'm not even sure if its Ngan's fault? I think publishers view trilogies as more marketable so they push for them so the author has to add in all this padding that nobody wants but everybody buys anyway.

anyway. I hope the second half of this book picks up because I want to like this....

Okay so I finished. I might make this more coherent later.

But for how Well Written this book is.... I am left wondering what the point of it was. Yes the last ~40 pages were fantastic but by that point I just didn’t care. This was a 400page segue from book 1 to 3. And yes I will read book 3 because I loved book 1, and I do want to know how this story resolves.

I also learned that I really hate First Person Present tense. or Present Tense in general. That isnt a fault of the book itself just a personal preference that I've been realizing for a while but solidified itself during this book