I enjoyed the beginning of this book more than I did the first one but by the cliffhanger at the end I'd stopped enjoying it as much.

I liked that the main protagonist started seeming less overpowered in this book as other characters point out that she's claiming more power than she actually has t.i. Baru probably didn't actually orchestrate everything she imagines she did, some of it was put in motion over a long period of time way before her.

Somewhere along in the middle I started wondering what genre is the book supposed to be? And isn't it cheating if the names of things have different meanings to me than they (seem to) do to the characters. There's a "bad magic" thing that's called uranium, and the characters react to that name as if it's a primitives' superstition.

I am pretty sure I would have enjoyed this book more when I was younger. It's still all right now, but the interesting questions Is Baru doing her teachers will? And will she keep sacrificing people in a kind of sunk cost fallacy? seem kind of irrelevant to me now. And the book ends in the middle. I don't think anything is resolved in a satisfying manner.