“To live is to grieve.” —Sankt Juris of the Sword

this took me an unbearable amount of time to finish. why? well i particularly hate nina’s emotional arc, zoyalai’s scenes were lacking, and—i cannot stress this enough—nina’s arc. it’s not a bad book tho mostly because i don’t think leigh can write badly. the prose is still sharp, the dialogue quick. but it was lacking something that was present in her soc duology and even the grisha trilogy—her characters are missing . . . they’re missing some desperation idek how to pinpoint it. anyway. this was certainly smth!