I enjoyed a lot of this sequel to 'The Pomegranate Gate', especially as the broader structure of the plot and characters' aims take shape. But it felt a little bit flaily, as if the individual steps the characters needed to accomplish in support of the broader goal took too much time, relative to their importance to the plot. It took WAY too long for everyone to get to Zahit, one character gets temporary amnesia in a way that serves very little purpose, and another character's eventual submission under time-loop torture didn't really convince me (although functionally I'm sure the thing this individual eventually does will probably become important later). The book felt, in a way that many medial books of a trilogy feel, a bit padded, a bit like filler. Typical second-book-itis.

Also, as much as I enjoy a closed time loop, the logic of the six-day message that structures the last quarter of the book, when revealed, was incredibly unconvincing, given the other possible forms that message could have taken. I'll still read the third, though, with great pleasure. The world and magic and characters are great, even if the plot construction doesn't quite work.

I'm sad to say I didn't love this.

I found the characters really lacking. We spend so much time on the plot that the characters kind of get left behind for the most part. I don't really feel like I got to know anything about the characters over the course of this book, and I have no idea what their motivations are.

I was frustrated with the characters and their actions. They would choose to do things based on seemingly nothing, and their actions would often seem counter to what I understood abut their motivations.

I thought the mirror elements in this text were really interesting, however they could have been done better considering the fact that this book is geared towards an adult audience. Again, I just found myself wanting more, craving something bigger and stronger and just overall more.

A captivating sequel. I really enjoyed it.
Thank you to the author and publisher for the opportunity to read this ARC, via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I must begin by saying that I was a huge fan of The Pomegranate Gate as the audiobook. I read the book in a day, and I had a wonderful time with it. Unfortunately, I was quite disappointed with The Republic of Salt as a second installment to this story. I’m not entirely sure whether the criticisms I have for The Republic of Salt don’t exist in The Pomegranate Gate or if I just overlooked them because I listened to the audiobook so quickly. Nonetheless, my feelings about this series definitely changed having read this second installment.

First things first, this is a very plot-driven book. The characters, as a result, really fall flat for a lot of the book. I do know this was a bit of an issue for the first installment, where character motivations were unclear for a lot of the adventure.

We are following way too many POVs here: Toba, Nastaly, Tsifra, Elena, and Asmel for a portion of the book are our main characters, but we’ll also occasionally get input from the old woman and Barsilay. It becomes rather tiresome having a POV switch every 1-5 pages, moving on before I have had time to form a single thought about a character. We have too many characters to follow here, and it disrupts the storytelling itself as well as any opportunity to dig into the characters or their relationships with one another.

The first third or so of this book is all of our groups traveling as a result of their final positions in the previous book. This part was so incredibly boring. Typically, when your group(s) is/are traveling, you’re able to enjoy the world building and character development. Being in the middle of nowhere is a great time for characters to be arguing or falling in love or, really, just experiencing any emotion.

While Barsilay, Naftaly, Elena, and the old woman were traveling, we got some of this, but not a whole lot of it really pushed the character development in a substantial way: the old woman was cranky as always, Elena was repeatedly described as cunning but only actually acted as such maybe once, Barsilay was weak and regaining strength, and Naftaly is obsessed with Barsilay while also trying to prove his independence. This group also develops a pretty strong since of loyalty to each other, especially to include Barsilay and trusting his judgment.

Naftaly really frustrated me through the beginning of this book because he lacked so much individuality and depended so much on Barsilay, specifically. His character is written in a way that this is kind of the point–he was sheltered his whole life and never particularly good at the thing he was destined to be, which ultimately leads to his vulnerability in other situations. He’s repeating this cycle of feeling like he’s not particularly great at anything and also having to depend on everyone around him to get through it. Barsilay exacerbates these feelings, especially in this first part, by repeatedly calling him “little one” and trying to put distance between them. Naftaly finally pushes back at one point, but it doesn’t feel like a reclaiming of power for him, rather like a child throwing a tantrum that they’ve been called a child.

Naftaly’s storyline eventually brings him to a point of having independent thoughts and doing things for himself, but only after a minor existential crisis. Neither his conflicts nor intimacy with Barsilay really carry much weight for me in this story, and I was very unmoved by them. I also felt that Barsilay’s character changed a lot from the first to second books, and in this installment, he’d lost his playfulness and cunning that made him so enjoyable in the first book. I was similarly apathetic about his rise to responsibility because I just couldn’t feel the dread and reluctance that he was. When all I’ve seen from him in hundreds of pages is “I’ve done bad things,” “I don’t wanna be king!” and “I know better than all of you mortals,” it’s tough to retain the fondness I had for him.

Elena’s character really confused me in general. She’s been made out to be the planner/schemer. I love that for her, and we do see her actually execute on that rather often, but she lost a lot of her emotional depth in this book. She didn’t think much about Toba nor Alasar, especially when she was considering founding a university with Rafeq in Luz. Again, this could have been a moment where she realizes that, for the first time, she’s able to make a selfish decision, but we have no reason to believe that that’s the significance of this opportunity since she doesn’t contextualize it.

Asmel’s POVs were included solely to further the plot. I didn’t really learn anything about him. It was sad to watch him lose his memories, but you also have a general sense that he’s going to get them back because the plot demands it.

Toba gets the next-best arc in this book behind Tsifra. We see her dealing with actual, real adult topics like what it means to exist as a person and how value of the self is determined. After the ending of The Pomegranate Gate, I expected her to begin on a path of becoming–she’d finally had a chance to be at her full power. However, during the too-long traveling part of this book, she was just getting worn down and tired. She learned next to nothing about herself or Asmel or their relationship during this period, and it was extremely boring to read. She was exhausted the whole book, and when she finally has a moment to breath, something terrible happens and she again either needs saving or has to save the world.

Tsifra is my favorite character here. She spends so much time in her head, and I felt like I was able to actually understand and connect with her better than any of the other characters in the book. I wish this book had been primarily about her and Toba because Kaplan clearly has some really great ideas about mirrors that she wants to execute on. These two characters are very consistently compared to each other both by themselves and by the narrative. They find things to envy about the other, and I really liked how Kaplan handled this relationship.

On that note–Kaplan obviously put a lot of thought into the mirror elements in this book. However, as this is an adult book, I really wanted the mirror elements to be a bit more advanced: rather than having two back-to-back POVs reflect each other on opposite sides of the mirror, show me something higher level. The mortal world has no room to breathe in this narrative because it’s clogged up by all the points of view in the Mazik world. There were so many scenes that could have been cut out and POVs we didn’t need that would’ve give this story room to breathe.

I generally just found that the character depth wasn’t there, motivations were unfounded and unclear, and the plot left little room for suspense. When there was a mystery in one POV, it’d get resolved almost immediately in another POV. It’s difficult to keep track of who knows what, and I struggled to feel very compelled with the plot when everything already had been explained to me as the reader. I also have a general dislike for foretelling and prophesies, and I didn’t find this book to be exceptional. I can handle knowing what’s going to happen, but only in situations where I give a damn about the people it’s happening to. Being told how this book would end really didn’t service this story at all.

Overall, I’m disappointed with this second installment. The Pomegranate Gate set the stage for a really captivating story and world, but The Republic of Salt got so bogged down with all the characters and POVs that it struggled to execute on making me care about what happened to any of them.

I liked the idea of the book but I wasn’t able to get too into it. I didn’t find a connection to the characters which makes it hard for me to read. But the world was great.

A great follow up to the Pomegranate gate. I need to mull over his one and it has been requested not to post reviews until nearer the release date so full review to come in September.

3.5. I think Kaplan is quite a talented writer. However, I don't think this book is for me. I haven't really been able to connect with the characters.