This review contains spoilers for the first book in the series, Witchmark. Do not read this if you haven’t read that book, but check out my review of Witchmark here.

I’ve got feelings about this book, conflicting feelings that are gonna make it sound like two separate people wrote this review.

Review from the person who loved this book

I should say it’s mostly just a lot of politics and planning and scheming and backstabbing. The big showdowns are mostly powerful word battles, not actiony action. But, OMG this plot was so good. It was so tight, with ups and downs and plots and conspiracies and everything. It started with the pressure on and barely let up. It was so intense, one of those audiobooks that had me making up random chores.

I loved that it was all about dealing with the aftermath of the first book. The world as these people knew it ended, there’s no electricity, a monster storm is about to hit, the government is in prison, there’s a mountain of secrets about to explode and the Amaranthians are here to serve some justice. If for a minute you think one thing is handled, three more fires are burning somewhere else.
I massively stan Robin, Miles’ assistant from Witchmark. Looks like she’ll be the main character in book 3 and I could not be more excited. She is driven and righteous and does not have time for anyone’s bullshit.

The sexy and intriguing reporter, Avia Jessup is so fun and smart, and did I mention she was sexy? Because Grace thirsts a lot in this book and I fully support that. I didn’t feel like a lot of the focus of the book was on the relationship though.
The royal family, Queen Constantia and her son were interesting to follow and mentally scream at. For different reasons in both cases, but scream lots I did. FFS Severin could you just not. Just stop. Though, to be fair, that will lead to an interesting book 3.

Also, there was only one bed.

I spent all book waiting for a particular shoe to drop, there’s lot of build-up towards it, and I was able to mostly see where this would be going. But I don’t know how I’m supposed to wait till next year to see this cliffhanger resolved.

But

To start off, I always have a problem with changing protagonists when I’m already very attached to the one from the first book, looking at you Lirael and Realm of Ash, and it’s a testament to how well this book is written that I blasted through it despite my bias here.

I didn’t think Grace was the main villain in Witchmark but I did mentally slot her with the baddies. So we started off on the wrong foot, I think if I wasn’t expecting a romance novel where you root for the protagonist I wouldn’t have minded so much. But I was just so annoyed with her. To be fair, she does grow and make progress, it just felt like too little too late.

I think, annoyance aside, her character is really interesting. She was part of the oppressive class and now she sees things that were wrong and wants to right injustices. But she’s too moderate. She wants everyone to get along and have slow and steady change without acknowledging the hurt that approach would actively cause.

I think the jarring tone switch between Miles who was so morally good and immediately went for the right thing to this greyer protagonist with more complicated nuances didn’t help my enjoyment either. Neither did the, unfortunately realistic, aspect of people in power not dealing with the full consequences of their actions.

Tl;dr: I loved the plot and pacing, but enjoyment probably depends on a lot of the reader’s personal feelings about the protagonist.

Bingo squares: Snow, Ice, Cold, Ghost, Climate (H -kinda, I don’t think this is what people think of when they say climate fiction, but it works), published 2020, Canadian, Romantic, Politics (H)

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