Guys, I'm so sad. I feel like I should make a joke here, but I'm genuinely disappointed and I really don't have it in me.

My relationship with this series has been a wild up-and-down ride since the beginning. I have LOVED these books. I spent an embarrassing amount of money this year on a special edition of book 1. Book 5 was the comeback kid after a Lon Leresh-shaped lull in book 4. I was so excited about where we were going. The end of book 5 was such a cliffhanger!

But unfortunately, I think this might be where I have to part ways with Rezkin for good.

This book felt like a MASSIVE step back for Rezkin's character and for the series. After

Spoiler

he died at

the end of the previous book, he spent this entire book undercover as the Raven, free as a bird, fast-traveling his way across the entire continent in mere blinks of an eye. We didn't make any progress towards defeating Caydean, we didn't make any progress interpersonally with the characters' relationships (with one notable exception!), and we didn't make much progress in Rezkin's own development as a character (with one notable exception?).

Honestly, it feels like the author is bored with her own story.

This series has always been very seriously flawed. I've seen the prose described as "grin and bear it" in another review here, which I think is very accurate, but it made up for these issues in sheer screaming fun. I'm not sure if it's just me, but that latter element was absolutely nowhere in my experience of reading this book. The story felt lifeless and empty, like the author was just rushing to hit necessary points and get it over with. The usual stupidity seemed extra stupid, and the heart and enjoyable hijinks were absent.

Everything from here on out is a spoiler.

Things I did like in this book:

• Movement on the Frisha issue! Frisha finally escaped and her golem was defeated. That's a huge relief to me, as this situation was very stressful. However, Tieran acted like an irrational, angry blockhead during this entire episode, and I'm not sure I will forgive him for it.

• I thought it was really funny when Caydean's bloody, over-the-top ritualistic demon summoning ended with all the demons wishing death on fae and humankind and then Avikeev is like "AND WESSON IN PARTICULAR." Like wow somebody's obsessed.

• I thought it was REALLY funny when Rezkin tries to impersonate a ladies' maid and gets called out for not walking right and it says, "Disappointed that he had failed in his femininity, Rezkin retreated." CRIT FAIL on femininity roll.

• I still like Wesson a lot.

That's pretty much it for what I liked. Things that bummed me out:

• Rezkin's elvish powers have leaped so far forward now that he was able to do all his subterfuge and spying as the Raven with magical disguises and illusions. Kinda neat, but also is just a massive shortcut for him and the playing field didn't seem to be leveled by the opposition of demonic powers as much as it might have been.

• Seena as baby dragon companion was fine. I like her taking the place of Cat as the companion animal that Rezkin loves almost against his will. I even like her functioning as one of the mental/spiritual ties that is shielding him against the elven madness. "Rezkin was saved from the madness by his early emotional repression, and now that he is becoming more open it is connection to others that saves him" is a GREAT development along a theme, I think. HOWEVER, Seena's actual purpose, which is to act as a convenient fast travel mechanic, is not nearly as great. There were times when I genuinely didn't know where Rezkin was for several paragraphs because he was jumping so frequently from city to city. It just felt cheap.

• After being saved from Lon Leresh (my beloathed) in the previous book, what did we do in this book but go RIGHT BACK to that cursed land! We spent a full half of the book there. I like Yserria and I don't mind what she and Malcius have going on. It's kind of cute. But oh my goodness the queenship contest was mind-numbingly stupid. The arena fight and parallel Godzilla vs Kong match that was going on in the city just had me flipping pages as fast as possible out of monotony rather than suspense. And after all that, we didn't even uncover Caydean's real purpose in Lon Leresh. What are we doing? What are we accomplishing? It felt like this book used so many pages and so many words to barely take one half of one step forward.

• Developments on the Tam front? What even WAS that? He's barely back after FINALLY being rescued, and now he's missing again, captive again? And we don't even hear about it until halfway through the book? Does nobody in this WORLD care about Tam except Rezkin? And then he found him after like one chapter, and again nothing at all was resolved.

• Entire massive swaths of characters were offscreen for this entire book. The cast may have reached a point of critical overload, if this is the best we can do. The strikers? Reaylin? Anything going on in Cael that's not Tieran fighting with Frisha's golem? What about that other kingdom Rezkin conquered, with the sword? The wolves, from last book? There are so many tangled threads we have to pull on, and instead we chose to spend half the book on Lon Leresh and all of our relationship-exploring points on Azeria.

• AZERIA. I don't mind Azeria as a character. She doesn't fawn over Rezkin and she stands up to him. Other than that, there's not much to her, which to be fair isn't that unusual in this series. However, what I DO mind is our incredibly fast, unearned speedrun of Rezkin and Azeria suddenly becoming this endgame couple with an unbreakable yearning bond. Need I remind anyone that this is the sixth book in this series, and we met Azeria JUST LAST BOOK?

As I said before, there are SO MANY TANGLED THREADS. Not only in a plot sense, but in a relationship sense! I am wild to see developments on the fronts of Frisha, Tam, Rezkin's mom, Striker Farson, even Rezkin meeting Thresson! We have spent such a long time seeing these tiny little cracks open up in Rezkin's impenetrable facade as he learned how to be vulnerable and care about people. (Temporary blindness in book 3, my beloved!!!) To do all that and then have all the characters I care about either offscreen or completely separated from one another, while Rezkin is suddenly pledging unfettered honesty, vulnerability, and faith to a character I met ONE BOOK AGO feels like a total farce.

There just doesn't seem to have been even a token effort at making this relationship something load-bearing, and because of that a large part of this book falls completely flat. Rezkin's incognito meetup with Azeria has none of the irony or bittersweet feeling that it should carry. Azeria's supposed sorrow and Rezkin's supposed yearning failed to provoke a single answering emotion in me. Rezkin's final reveal of himself to Azeria lacked all of the drama, pathos, and swelling triumphant music in the background that should have accompanied that moment. There's just nothing there, and there never has been.

This is such a sad, sad day. I want to say that I hope the next book will redeem whatever's going on here, but the truth is I'm not sure if I will pick up the next book. After six books, it almost seems like Rezkin is no closer to defeating Caydean than he was at the beginning, and even if Caydean is brought down there will still be the fae vs demon war to win. I'm beginning to doubt whether my investment can hang on for that long, and whether the author's can either.