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2.5 stars rounding up to 3 because I think the book itself isn't bad, I personally just didn't enjoy the direction it took and the overall narrative.

My dislike is 2 fold. Firstly this book focuses on the overall theme/ideological conflict of the story and that theme/conflict is just not very nuanced nor complex and I feel like we got a a decent amount of fleshing it out in the in the first book. I'm fine with continuing to flesh it out a bit more, but this book really focused on it and I felt like everything else suffered more in this book because of it; world building, characterization, narrative, etc. By the time the ending rolled around I feel like it was just beating a dead horse. The overall conflict that is driving the theme home also just feels forced. Several characters tell other characters they need to pick a side and I'm not feeling the flash point or urgency of why any of it needs to actually happen other than that the narrative and theme dictates so.

My second issue was just a lot of the author choices and directions that took place. I wasn't a fan of bringing the nobles back and being the 2nd antagonistic driving force in the conflict, they just feel like a lame distraction of everything else that's going on. I know it's another loop/cycle that ties up some threads from the first book, but it just doesn't feel like a satisfying closing of the loop. Secondly another main driving conflict point was the miscommunication trope which I just absolutely detest. Especially because the character who is deceived in this one ends up being this savant of the exchange and has centuries to reflect and hone her craft, but still plods along and completely falls into a simple trap hook, line, and sinker. You can't be that gullible/stupid if you want them to also be this sage like savant. It makes the trope even more irritating to me. Lastly the book ends up a stupid cliffhanger where all lame ass nobles are still toiling around and seem set up to still be driving stuff in the third book and then all of our main characters were forced to pick a side and everyone just half heartedly does so because they're being told they need to. It just doesn't feel like a whole lot of progression or narrative momentum actually happened in this book.

I still like really like the base ideas and concepts that are in the series. I think this book introduced some more cool worldbuilding, which is this series greatest strength. I like the characters well enough too. I just don't know that I like where this is going. I'm hoping the last book can pull me back in and narratively "pull off" the ending, but I'm not sure how confident I am in that at this point.