I can't quite give this 4 stars due to the way some plot points were developed. The positives were that I very much enjoyed the developing world-building and all of the new information and details we got about that! It gave some answers about questions raised in the first book and set things up nicely for the next installment.

Points I wasn't all that happy with: Lore's avoidance of what was going on. That was challenged in text and part of her character arc, but I think it went on a bit too long to the point of becoming frustrating for me as a reader. Another aspect I think could have been handled differently was the romance; it's obvious where Whitten wants to go with the characters, so much so it became too heavy handed in the book while still not progressing as it should.