Magic was useful for everything. It just killed you. You should always think of it first. Then you should decide if a little dram of death was worth it.

Just whoa. This book got big. We see a lot more about the world and more about the powers that exist beneath the surface. The world is weird and complicated and everything we thought we knew… well, i9t’s mostly right. Just incomplete.

Kip gets a lot more face time and is really growing up. We still get a few cases of Kip the Lip, but he’s really starting to come into his own. His relationships with the rest of the characters really drive the book, in particularly Teia. Kip is also one of the main weirdnesses I keep finding with this book is the tonal shifts. Kip has literally killed gods and kings… and now he’s back at school. It’s intense training, but it still feels completely out of order.

Speaking of Teia, she got a lot more interesting than I expected her to. A lot of her character development seems to come from serving two masters and she could likely get out of the whole mess if she just talked to someone… but it’s still complicated enough that we’ll give it a chance. I’m curious how this turns out.

Gavin… oh Gavin. I’m not sure where that storyline is going on now. He’s going through hell and gets barely any relief. Then there was this bomb, just dropped at the end of a chapter and never really looked into again:

Thirty hours later, Gavin killed the last man just before the sun rose. And he went to his chambers, and for the first time since he’d brought hell to earth, he drafted black luxin .

And oh that ending. Really makes me wonder what’s even real…

Karris. Oy. She’s pretty badass. Good to see something going right for someone at least.

Liv? Good riddance. She’s only in a few chapters. Probably going to have to deal with her in the next book, but so it goes.

Overall, a solid entry in the series. I’m curious where it goes from here.