It's not accurate to say this is everything I wanted from the sequel to my favourite book, Hands of the Emperor, because actually it's quite different than I had expected. Early in the book this slightly disappointed me and made me worry that I would dislike it, but that worry didn't last long. The book blew me away. I struggled to put it down for necessities like sleep and work. 

It's hard to say too much about the book without going into spoiler territory, but the central relationship is everything I wanted, it could not be more so.

I was left wanting another 900 pages of this book, I'm not sure there's any greater compliment.