This is a great sequel! The story picks up right after the first book and the story was great! I loved the world building a lot in this book.

I need A.A. Vora to write books forever so I can keep reading them. She is a genius.

This book was beyond spectacular. It's the kind of epic YA fantasy that makes me want to swallow it whole. It lets characters be wrong, make mistakes, and face the sometimes devastating consequences of their choices. It's about the painful reality of growth, of how fraught making the right choice can be. It's truly a masterpiece.

This is an aside from the actual review, but the content warnings for this book are, to put it nicely, awful. “Cliffhanger ending?” You’ve gotta be kidding me. Here’s what I would say they actually are:
-blood and gore
-violence
-murder
-war
-implied SA (past, side character)
-animal cruelty resulting in death
-suicidal thoughts/ideation
-intrusive thoughts
-attempted suicide (on page)
-weaponization of religion/religious manipulation
-self-medication via drugs
Those are all the ones I caught. If you’re going to put any content warnings at the front of your book, you should take it seriously. I, for one, would’ve liked to know ahead of time that there was an on page attempted suicide because in the past, that would’ve sent me spiraling. Luckily, I’m on medication now and am in a place to handle it, but it was still an unpleasant surprise. I cannot stress enough how different suicidal thoughts/ideation are from actually attempting it. Ok. Onto the actual review.

Before I get into my bitching and moaning, let me get the good stuff out of the way. On a craft level, this book is miles better than the last one. The writing on a line level has improved drastically, the dialogue is more natural and smooth, the pacing doesn’t feel like you’re in a timeless void, and the characters, as much as I personally dislike some of them, are far better written. With one exception, but we’ll get there.

If the last book focused on Aina, then this book focused on Aranel. While I didn’t like him in the first book and still don’t really care about him, even I can see that his personal arc is very well written. The individual chapters are, unfortunately, a bit boring as he learns and relearns something we as the readers already know. From a character perspective, I can understand why it takes time for him to finally take action, but as a reader, seeing him go through the same thought process with little to no variation in all his chapters up to the 50% mark isn’t the most interesting. Once things kick into gear… they’re still a little boring. Sorry. Personal biases are getting in the way.

Aina is going through her depression era as a result of her mother dying in the last book. She is the one with the previously mentioned on page suicide attempt, but it happens pretty early into the book, so if you’re sensitive to that, I would skip or skim her chapters until about the 25% mark. Her suicidal/intrusive thoughts continue throughout the book, and I thought they were handled fine. It was nothing groundbreaking, but I thought her relationship with one of the other new characters and how he encouraged her was sweet. She’s probably my second favorite character in the book, behind Meizan.

Yeah, that was a surprise to me too. Mr. I’m Just Here Because the Author Said So is actually pretty important in this book. As I’ve mentioned in previous reviews, I have a soft spot for characters who are done with everybody’s shit, and Meizan falls perfectly into this category in this book, but in a fun way this time instead of a “why doesn’t he just leave” kind of way. Like Aranel, he has a good character arc that I think is going to be explored more in the next book. There wasn’t a lot of payoff to the bloodlust he experiences when under the influence of Malin’s chitrons, which was disappointing, but his chapters were consistently the most exciting for me.

That brings me to Himalia. *sigh* In case you’re new here, let me introduce myself. Hi. I’m Lee, lover of books, and also science. You could say I’m something of a scientist myself. So tell me why I keep stumbling head-first into reading books with the worst representation of scientists and/or science. Himalia falls into what I like to call (and what I stole from M) The Scientist™️. Basically, it’s a character archetype that appears in all forms of media that’s there to exposit Science. What kind of science? Uh, there’s different kinds?

Science is a very, very diverse subject. Even within individual disciplines, such as biology, my area of study, there’s a ton of different niches that people study. Hell, there are people that devote their entire life to studying algae, which is frankly impressive. Of course, people in similar fields that have a similar basis tend to have overlapping knowledge, and have overarching knowledge of other disciplines. To use myself as an example, I know a lot about the anatomy, physiology, and phylogeny of herps (amphibians, reptiles, and caecilians). I can apply some of that knowledge to other species since they share similarities, but if I was asked to identify all the bones in the human body, I would struggle. Similarly, I have a passing knowledge of chemistry, such as what atoms are composed of, how they interact with each other, etc. But if someone were to ask me a question about organic chemistry, I would have no clue. Of course, you have to have a good understanding of multiple areas if you want to conduct any decent study, but that knowledge is limited to what’s relevant to your field. If I’m looking at fossils, I don’t exactly need to know how the nuclear fusion of a star works, you get me?

Himalia is the quintessential Scientist™️, knower of all things (especially those that are plot relevant). She also talked exclusively in jargon, which annoyed me to no end. Yeah, scientists use jargon to describe their work, but not all the time. We’re human beings, not robots. Maybe that’s just the way Himalia talks, but it feels more like the author didn’t have a good grasp on what scientists are like and threw as many technical words as she could find into Himalia’s vocabulary to make her seem smart. Which she categorically isn’t. Sure, she can rattle off theories and has a major revelation at the end of the book which turns out to be a setup for the next book, but she makes choices that paint her as a stupid, selfish child (for reference, she’s supposed to be 18. I was 18 only 2 years ago, and while teenagers are stupid, they aren’t this stupid). I’m going to be vague to avoid spoilers, but there’s a situation where Himalia is sent to collect medical supplies. This is an urgent task. So guess what she does? She takes a detour to collect a sample. No, I’m not exaggerating to make her look worse, she literally does this. And I really don’t think the intention was to make her look bad.

She also exposits about the magic system, but none of it adds to our understanding. She’s just reiterating what we already know, and it’s boring and annoying. I’ll be honest, about halfway into the book, I started skimming some of her chapters because I knew nothing was going to happen. And guess what? I was right.

This brings me to our final character (because honestly, the rest are kinda just there except for Mirya, we love Mirya): Zenyra. Dear god. This bitch. The story treats her like L when she’s really Light Yagami, but at least he was amusing to watch because in every episode he’s freaking out about how L is going to find him out. And even he has more than 2 brain cells. To stop myself from going on a pages long rant about her, I’ll end it there.

Going back to the magic system, it’s basically just plot convenience at this point. Which is fine, but in the first book, there was such an emphasis on the rules and limitations, and now it’s random bullshit go. All that setup for everything to basically be thrown out the window. If it had always been this way, I wouldn’t have mentioned it, but it was, so I will.

Honestly, this book’s biggest flaw was that it was just boring. I’m self-aware enough to realize that’s a me thing. I didn’t really like the first book (I gave it 2*) and didn’t have high hopes going into this one. I will say, it impressed me in some ways, but completely disappointed me in others. I won’t be continuing this series. With that being said, I think if you enjoyed the first one, you’ll love this one even more.

Thank you to NetGalley for an ARC of this book!

First of all, I appreciate the recap on the author's website. NetGalley wouldn't let me copy or click on the hyperlink but it wasn't that long to type out. While I remember the gist from the first, I haven't re-read it since it first came out so the recap was definitely essential for people who haven't re-read. Slightly off-tangent but I did fall-down a rabbit hole on the author's websites because the website was very nicely done and had a lot of information available regarding the world-building in the book. There was a page for the magic-system alone and a detailed summary of the first book! I wish more authors would do this if there has been a significant time gap between the release of books.

The beginning was very slow with very little action. There's also the introduction of a new character, Himalia, who I had to Ctrl + F the recap to remember who she was it. I wasn't very interested in her POV as I didn't think she was that compelling of a character and I felt there was too much from her POV which mostly consisted of her wandering around and doing research. I also didn't like how Aranel was willing to turn a blind-eye to the atrocities being committed by Zenrya, I felt like that was out of character. Not only that, but that he would also become very close with Zenrya too. I also thought Mirya was an unnecessary character and I wish it just stuck to the main cast from the last book because I had some trouble keeping everyone straight.

I found myself less interested in this book because most of it focused on battles with Zenrya rather then the truly interesting world-building and magic-system. The story did pick up though, with the introduction of bonds with the planetary beasts. I thought that was the most interesting part of the book and it definitely makes me plan on reading the next book.

Altogether, I thought this was a good sequel to the first but it didn't hold my attention until the last third or so. That being said, the world-building is definitely the strongest part and I wish it focused more on that and less on the battles.