It’s taken me a while to decide on a rating for this book. On the one hand, I knew going in to this series that 1) I don’t tend to like books in this genre and 2) the series changes a lot over time. Well, I hate the direction this has taken. The writing style became unbearable, the characters became tropey in ways I very much dislike and don’t entirely understand, and I’ve lost sight of what the overall arch of the story is supposed to be, and I don’t really care. I’ve always been curious about why this series is so popular but if this is what I can expect going forward, I’m not sure I can take it. The only thing that might cause me to continue is a curiosity about some of the monsters introduced in this book. I’m not sure that’s enough.