I went into this without having read the first book and I think this put me at a slight disadvantage as I did not know either the back story to the characters or the history of the world. Saying this I think that I managed to pick up what I needed to from the first couple of chapters and did not realise that this had a LGBTQAI+ element with our main character being in a Gay relationship which was a pleasant surprise. I enjoyed reading about the characters and watching them grow throughout the story which is a credit to the author and it helped that there was a well rounded world for them to exist in. I will definitely be going back and reading book one and doing a re-read of this one so that I can read the final book in the trilogy.