“We are the weapons, and this place is the stone they use to sharpen us.”
—Violet

This quote was so accurate and of course, if you’re capable of even the least bit of free thought, applies to the real world as well. I expect this’ll end up being my favorite quote of the entire series (assuming I read it all).

It’s sometimes slow-paced like its predecessor, but the corruption and betrayal vibes are high, which is fun. It’s also a bit darker with some full-on t0rture, … and more. I liked that. The action scenes are fun and well done enough that they pretty much make up for the slower scenes.

The steamy scenes, IMO, lightning and all, are still pretty underwhelming, especially given all those super strong feels Violet and Xaden supposedly have. It also doesn’t pack ‘real feels’ for me on that front, as some books do.

Overall though, the world-building, writing, character development and action scenes are well done—Yarros sure is one to watch, if you’re not already. The biggest thing that I think would improve this book would be if some things, which the author opted to ‘tell instead of show’ were shown. For me, telling can be dull. She does lots of showing, I’m not saying she doesn’t! But much of it also involves just telling and those are the parts that were a bit slow for me.


Minor plausibility / continuity issue for me:
Violet is incredibly strong, and we see her grow to be more so over the course of both books. Yet, she lets the words of a bully get under her skin—I find this implausible, and to be poor continuity for a character who is usually, otherwise well-developed.


Audio:
The audio was fantastic—I see a lot of other readers complain about the female narrator, but I thought she did great. So did Teddy, and the overall quality is solid. 4 stars on this front. ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️