This is, I think, one of those odd handful of children's series that turns into YA before the end. That always irritates me slightly when I review the individual volumes on Goodreads, as it seems more consistent to have the whole series under one shelf or the other, but I suppose if a series follows the same characters over time, those characters age and that has its own consequences. There are exceptions to that exact progress, though, and this series might be one of them. It's only a few months, really, since the events of Wise Child, and both the protagonists, including the narrator Colman, are actually children. (They're those creepy looking kids on the cover. Cornish Gothic, I think the illustrator is going for.) But the argument here is more adult, and the tone is immensely darker. It's full of murder and torture, and though the previous two books in the series have been fairly grim around the edges, there's always been that sort of peaceful happy centre, and that's really not the case here. Hence the different shelving.

What remains childish about the series is, I think, the refusal to look at killing as a useful tactic for the good guys. I don't meant to imply by that that the refusal to murder is in itself childish, but there's something really off-putting to me, something deliberately and almost harmfully naïve, in the choice to let torture and slavery and murder go on for one minute longer than they have to simply because one of the good guys feels they are above the act of killing. I'm sure the fact that their morals remain unbesmirched is a great comfort to those others who have been slaughtered, or who are watching their children starve to death. Meroot has been a blight upon the land for at least a generation at this point, and there's a doran in her inner circle with the opportunity and ability to save everyone by getting rid of her for good, and they refuse to do it, because apparently decent people don't do that. Well, I beg to fucking differ I think, and it irritates me that the price of such squeamishness isn't even mentioned. It's all very well wittering on about dorans being in tune with nature, but shit dies in nature, and violently, so get on with at least considering it, please.

Suffice to say, this was my least favourite of the trilogy. Wise Child remains the best of the bunch, and I think the only one I'd ever be interested in reading again.