A thing I really liked about the first book was the way every single character was sympathetic, and I was rooting for all of them, despite the way that several of them were operating at cross purposes. This is no longer the case here. There is clear villain (several, really; one is a repeated viewpoint character). This changes the vibe. I'm already invested, but if I weren't, this would feel a bit... I don't know, not bad as such, but nothing special, either.

I really don't have much to say about this book, and that's partly because I'm barely able to string enough words together for a book review anymore, and partly because I went straight on to the next one and am regarding this more as "middle section of a whole" than as a book in its own right, but it's also partly because the whole book honestly feels more like that middle section of a whole than anything. It's not remarkable in any way the first book wasn't, and the obvious villain(s) and rising political intrigue make it stand out less from the genre as a whole, but overall it's just a solid continuation and solid step towards the end, no more and no less.