Gosh, I struggled with this. It's my usual Robin Hobb issue. It's a good story, but... it takes an ice age to read. Plot moves at a trickle.

V. pleased with the change in Malta, although that was kind of sudden. I didn't get any sense of it being a gradual process at all, rather than her just waking up one morning and discovering that she was in fact not the center of the universe.

The actual center of the universe, at least if you ask him, appears to still be Kennit, whom I like less and less and less and less. Manipulative. Power-hungry. Probably psychopathic.