This was definitely the low point of the series for me, and not because of how sad or brutal the story was. With the biggest character gone, there wasn't much motivation or interest to be had.

The strongest point in the book is its opening. We get our first glimpse of the post-apocalypse world and things are bleak. Really bleak. Rapist jerky bleak. This part paints a very vivid picture and gives you the only real feel you'll ever get of the apocalypse.

Things devolve pretty quickly after this. I have a few main issues with this book:

1. The world feels small. Incredibly so. The characters travel from location to location and there doesn't seem to be much in between - there's a bit about them walking or riding or whatever - and then they arrive. There's no sense of scale to the world at large. Time also seems to move inconsistently.

2. Nel starts out as an interesting character, but becomes tired once the romance begins. This is the book's biggest waste of potential. Nel stops feeling like a "weapon-made-woman" and feels instead like a watered down version of Violet.

3. Deus ex machina. Or something like it. There are too many instances of "I hacked you to think/do that". It reminds me of the bit in every Mission Impossible movie where someone pulls off their mask, causing you to rethink everything! Which is great because it only happens once. If every character started pulling off their faces, you'd just think you wasted your time. Guðsríki (how do you pronounce that, anyway) does it too many times and it feels like a tired way to try to put in a late-game plot twist or three.

I had other, more minor issues with it (we get it, those pesky Christians are bad), but there were also lots of good things that carried over from the previous novels. Honestly though, there was nothing here that was both new and good, only some unexpected disappointments I hadn't seen before.