I received a free ARC of this book through NetGalley.

I would like to start off this review by copying something I wrote in another review I wrote recently:

"So. There is an issue with reading advance review copies, and it can be a pretty big one. Heck, often enough authors and publishers themselves are quick to warn you when you receive a review copy that this issue exists. The issue is that you don't get to review the final product. Of course, this is pretty obvious considering that they're called advance review copies, but it's something I had to think about a lot while reading this book and considering my review. You don't get to review the final product. All the little things which may be fixed by an editor or last minutes additions just won't be there to help a reviewer see what the book will ultimately be. So I can only hope that all I say in this review will still be accurate and fair once the book releases."

A bit lazy I guess to just copy paste a whole paragraph from one of my other reviews, but it felt necessary to give this warning for this book in particular as I start with what I didn't enjoy about the book in terms of its writing. There were many passages where some key point of the scene was repeated again and again, usually even with the same wording or phrasing. This is mostly near the beginning, and peters out towards the end, but it was something which left a bad impression early on. The most evocative example of this is in the first few chapters, any interaction betwen Seraeyu and Sakaeri and the word "misaligned".

Let's move past the writing and go the vibes of the book. This is something I liked a lot. As I was reading the first half of the book, the feeling I kept on getting was that of someone taking a great big deep breath after something really heavy has happened, and they need a breather before getting on with things. In other books I might say that the story felt slow, but here it was more of a well deserved rest after the drama of the ending of the previous book, a rest for both the reader and the characters. And once everyone had had that breath, it was time to get down to the real business.

The multiple realms, the idiosyncratic factions and the naming conventions all remain fun ideas from the first book, and the revelations made in the second seem less for us the reader to be surprised than to get the book's characters on the same page as the readers.

A fun read, with a banging title.

It was a good immersive story.
I like that characters and the plot.
It was something unique. I would like to see more of this author.

A great start to the novel and I was really getting absorbed into the world building.. And then I kind of found it really patchy….. in my view it might have benefited from a heavy edit. I did really want to enjoy this book. Thank you to the author. Thank you to #netgalley and the publisher for an ARC.