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1.5

Have you ever read a book that actually makes you nostalgic for another book which you didn't like that much at the time but then you read something worse which gives you a new appreciation for that other book?

Yeah.

Reading this book was like that, and made me consider bumping A Gathering of Shadows up a notch, because while both books suffered form some of the same issues - i.e. second-book-in-trilogy slump, not much actually happening aside from meeting a few new characters and mostly setting up the last book, and unlikable people - at least GoS wasn't so insufferably boring while doing it.

I started skimming in this book, skipping entire paragraphs at a time, which is something I try to avoid. The funny thing, though, is that I don't feel like I actually missed anything, because there wasn't anything to miss. So I'd originally give this a 2-stars, but I'm bumping it down to 1.

So, anyway...

After the events of the first book, Yukiko finds her Kenning powers magnifying to the point where she is a danger to herself and others, both people and animals. She buggers off to try and find an answer and a way to control her powers - and then ends up on this side story which is pretty much just an excuse to waylay her for most of the story, and to introduce a new (view spoiler)[thunder tiger to the fight (hide spoiler)], and also to find out that Yukiko is (view spoiler)[pregnant with Hiro's kid (hide spoiler)], because of course she is.

We get some backstory on Buruu and discover he is the titular Kinslayer, but we never actually get the whole story. We do find out, though, that he's apparently entirely incapable of controlling himself around a female in heat, and reverts to being more of a beast than he was when we first met him...

Meanwhile, Kin is with the Kagé, and the Kagé are the biggest bunch of assholes. Kin has sacrificed much to be there - mostly for Yukiko, true - and tries to help the Kagé, but they're so busy being assholes to him, that they eventually drive him to doing something stupid... which neither a) came as much of a surprise when it happened, for all the belaboring of points this book does and b) isn't entirely unwarranted.

Meanwhile, there's Hiro and the Guild trying to solidify their reign, with Hiro just wanting revenge on Yukiko, and there's Michi trying to help Aisha, but she's locked up, so she spends most of the book seducing her jailer to try and get him to release her.

The most interesting character of the book is Hana, aka No One, who is a low-born girl who works in the palace and joins with the city Kagé - who seem much more relevant than the forest Kagé.

Of course, lots of things go wrong for, like, everybody. There's the requisite violence you get in war - along with a lot of whining about people actually daring to kill someone in war - but there's also a fair amount of torture, rape, threats of rape - (pretty much every main female character in this book is either raped or threatened with rape) - and random unnecessary killing of animals.

It was like Kristoff was hell bent on showing that YA books can be Grimdark, too. Yay.

And I wouldn't even necessarily mind if I felt like any of it actually served a purpose or a point to the story, but a whole hell of a lot of it just didn't.

So...

I already have the last book from the library, so I'll finish it, and just hope that it's not as slow and meandering and pointless as a lot of this book ended up being.