Every hero is someone's villain.

The Shattered Sea series continually improved upon the previous book and I found the finale continued that trend. It wasn't until the final quarter of the book where I really got in to it and felt that the rating went from "liked it" to "really liked it".

A hundred decisions made, and every time the greater good, the lesser evil.

I enjoyed the new POV's in each book but it took me longer than previous books to get in to Skara or Raith's perspective (as compared to Thorn or Brand who were enjoyable from the start). This may have delayed my enjoyment of the book until the stories tied together but it does, and it's excellent.

All I know is there's no changing yesterday. You can only look to do better tomorrow.

Unlike the sneak peak of magic we had in Half a King we got a full scale show and tell. I was hoping the consequences of leveraging Elf magic would have been more visible (references to Breaking made me anticipate a repeat).

'Seems the world hasn't changed as much as we thought.' ... 'In the ashes of every war the seeds of the next take root.'

I'm glad to have stuck with the series and happy to see Abercrombie deliver another great read. When comparing Shattered Sea to First Law this series is closer to PG-13 whereas First Law would be leaning towards R. This isn't a repeat of stories we saw with Ninefingers or Glokta and that's perfectly acceptable.