Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ

Thanks to Netgalley for providing a copy of this book for review.

I read that the author decided that since Miles had been badly injured and needed time to heal, she decided to make his sister Grace the POV character of this book. I didn't care much for Grace in the first book and disliked her even more in this one. Maybe by the end of the book she improved, but more than halfway in I was annoyed enough that I decided to skim.

Grace is placed in a prominent political position in this book and has the problems to go with it. First, without secretly imprisoned witches being used to control the weather, the weather is... out of control. Next, the political problem of exactly how to deal with these freed witches- people are going to be upset about their loved ones being imprisoned! Next, the main power source-aether- is now defunct, what with the witches being freed and all, and people are cold, afraid and upset because they don't understand what's going on. Also, there's an Amarathine delegation which has arrived to sit in judgement of Aeland and they are NOT happy. And then there's the Laneeri delegation that had planned to cause riots and mass murder in Aeland, now under arrest. So much to do!

And Grace doesn't have much idea how to handle any of it. She's got no allies other than her badly injured brother Miles, whom she promptly presses into service because he can speak Laneeri and she needs information from the prisoners. There's one strike against her. Second strike- although Grace has been raised to be a political creature, she somehow has managed to grow up without any allies among the aristocratic witches that she is nominally in charge of, and she's in a position of weakness there. Third strike- Grace is one of the most disingenuous characters I've ever read. No sooner does she think "I'll never dragoon my hurt brother into helping interrogate prisoners AFTER HE WAS A PRISONER OF WAR HIMSELF" then she's wheedling and hinting around that she could really use some help, oh what should she do; in Mile's room. Grace isn't honest with herself, much less anyone else, what her goals are and what she will do to achieve them.

Also, she starts a romance with Avia, the reporter from the first book. Avia makes her first appearance in this book basically being a papparazza and taking pictures of the Amaranthines without their permission, knowing she'll probably piss them off. Grace sees Avia as a braver version of herself, since Avia was an aristocrat who was kicked out of her family. Avia sees Grace as all she has lost. I wasn't really convinced by their feelings for each other.

So, there are a lot of problems to unravel and frankly I felt like Grace was not equal to it, didn't even see half of what was going on in front of her. Maybe by the end of the book it got better? But halfway through the book I couldn't agree with any of her decisions and I quit.