Bancroft continues to get better.
It feels foolish to offer more review than that on the third book in the series, but apparently I have 19858 characters left to fill, so I'll just meander a bit with some of my disorganized (and not-too-spoilery) thoughts.

I really loved this book, moreso even than its predecessors, which I also loved. I feel like I either need a sixth star, or to go back and rate everything else one point lower. The plot was captivating, the characters beautifully realized, the world fascinating, the prose elegant. I've always loved Bancroft's epigraphs, and while they're not quite as fun here as they were in Arm of the Sphinx, Jumet's wisdom is fantastic, and the newspaper excerpts a delight.

The first book is about becoming lost in the world. The second is about growing into it and finding ourselves. This third story is about the people we love. While the earlier two volumes had lots of twists into the weird, the highs and lows of the third story focus more on moments of plot. The perils never feel like shallow melodrama, and the twists and turns all feel natural within the strange, often hopeless purgatory of the Tower. There are definitely some emotional jolts, moments of despair, as well as delightful triumph.

While the first and second book toured several ringdoms of the Tower, this volume sticks almost entirely to one. It brings back many familiar faces from the earlier books, casting each of them in new light as circumstances change. More and more of the Tower's mysteries are explained, but never enough to render it predictable.

The structure on this one is a little odd; it tends to move three steps forward and two back. Chapters will lead up to a major event, then the next section will start somewhere amid the action of the previous one, but from another point of view. It's weird, but it works, and lends some additional urgency to the later chapters as you know disaster looms.

As a writer, this sort of brilliance fills me with envy, and an awkward admixture of hope and despair.