Not as good as the first book, but I still liked it.

Holy cliffhanger, Batman.

I mean, I did like this, but I didn’t like it as much as I liked the first book. And it’s probably mostly my fault. I don’t know, I was in a weird place with this, not paying it enough attention as I should, on top of Ryan going and changing up the format on us. The first book was told through Vaelin’s perspective, and it was so immersive. I normally love books that have rotating POV characters, but I kept getting angry when it would switch between them, and that’s never good. I also wasn’t super invested in the outcome of the battles. I figured the good guys would win. The biggest ‘oh shit’ moment came at about the 3/4 mark, and it was all downhill from there. SPOILERS I’m speaking about Frentis being forced to assassinate the King, and then Lyrna being lit on fire. It was the only moment in the book that surprised me END SPOILERS.

The four POV characters are Vaelin (he’s still here, but his sections felt the shortest, which I thought was sucky), Frentis, Lyrna, and a new character called Reva. I wasn’t into Frentis’s chapters at first because he was so passive. it’s basically just him being held in thrall by magic to this woman who is part of the Big Plot, and she forces him to murder a bunch of people and then falls in love with him like a big creep. His sections got better after he started regaining some control. I actually liked Lyrna’s sections a lot. I didn’t much care for her in the first book, and I do think Ryan mostly wastes the traumatic incident that occurs halfway through the book. He could have done a lot more with it. I liked Reva a ton. I love stories about people who change their beliefs and have realizations.

Anyway, I liked this, the narrator is still great, but it didn’t really get me emotionally like the first one did, for whatever reason. Will read the last book soon, though, before I forget everything. Kinda nervous about it, though. Seems to most people’s least favorite of the three.