I have mixed thoughts on this one. This may be a series where the first book is actually the best. Part of it is that Corrick really has lost a lot of his ruthlessness by this book, and that was what made him so interesting in the first place. By the time we get to this one, he's honestly a bit pathetic. It's probably more realistic after years of trauma, but who wants that? I want my ruthless Cruel Corrick doing what he has to do to get back to his girl. (Basically, I want Kaz Brekker.)  Having all 3 MCs split up for almost all of the book made things a bit tedious as we watched all of them work over the same puzzle of what's going on in Kendala. To Kemmerer's immense credit, though, she never switched perspectives on a cliffhanger-- I felt like we ended at a satisfying point before jumping perspectives. We also get my favorite couple of the series (surprisingly NOT Corrick and Tessa, who spent the entire book pining for each other and getting a bit repetitive) and I was honestly obsessed with them. Finally, I thought it was just a bit odd that this whole series was intended to be focused on Kandala and helping the people there, but a significant portion of this book is devoted to the ongoing unrest in Ostriary. Kandala was like this abstract goal for 2/3 of the characters, where they were trying to eventually get there but in the meantime, they're mired in this completely different country's political unrest. Overall I would still recommend this series because it's been 10/10 fun, but I think looking at it critically, it's more of a 7/10. The first book is definitely my favorite, followed by the last book, with the second suffering from classic second-book-syndrome.