I’m not mad, I’m just disappointed.

GOD AND TAKE A SHOT EVERY TIME SOMEONE EITHER “MAKES A VULGAR GESTURE” or sticks their tongue out. High schoolers, the lot of these assholes

This book suffers from an identity crisis. It wants so bad to be a lofty, sweeping high fantasy, and yet it anchors itself down with childish squabbling through characters who somehow seem to get worse and worse the further the book goes. It can’t be YA, because it has more sex than a bodice ripper, yet it sure is written like one.

But there’s gay people now! So!! Yay?

There are things in this book that I liked. I would have DNF’d it if not. But the bad severely outweighs the good, and Mor cannot claw her way up to two stars no matter how much I like her (her coming out is…. Not well done.)

Let’s talk about Lucien.

Oh, Lucien. You poor thing. Having him get a mating bond with Elaine was the worst possible thing to happen to him. He can no longer have growth, no longer can he have the ability to independently move past the abuse he’s gone through. Instead, for arbitrary reasons that don’t matter, the plot forces him to fuck off for the majority of the book.

And Tamlin? I’ve never seen character assassination this bad. There’s no reason for it, none at all, and what’s even worse is that he has a line so bad that I actually paused the audiobook and had to write it down. It’s just horrible, and it makes his ‘redeeming moment’ feel cheap and insulting.

I hate the word ‘mate’ and I hate the diet omegaverse verbiage. It makes me feel oily. I miss Rhys when he had some greyness to his character.

War has never been so damn boring. It was neat to see the Weaver and Bone carver get some spotlight (speaking of the reveal related to B.C, it’s. Fine. It’s okay!) but the fighting itself just lacked scale. None of it matters. A big part of why I just found myself caring less and less is that the last half of the book did NOT have to be as long as it was.

I just felt!! More and more bored! And that really bites ! Because the second book was such an improvement from the first! It’s sad to see another decline in quality.