2022 reread: I actually liked this more throughout. It’s Ronin all the way down yaaaallll

She’s good at the endings. Gotta give her that.

This is, I think, a good follow up to what ended up being one of my favourites. And I really liked the Raven Cycle books. I read them at exactly the right time in my life, both mood and genre wise. This book had to be a down beat after the previous, which somehow made me like Declan immensely despite thinking he was a douche before.

Sooo much stuff happened and was introduced last book, it was always going to be like this. It’s a definite middle book. And, some of it feels a bit unearned, particularly with Bryde, but also in general, the novel feels a bit padded to me. What I mean by Bryde, is that typically each book rotates with a central character having their spotlight. But there’s not much to see of Bryde, and the big shit about everyone else, we pretty much already got.

However. There are some good moments, you’d expect no less from these books. More than enough chapters with endings that are perfect and poignant. There’s more world building revealed too. It’s really just that only part of the ending hit home and it felt like we meandered to get there. It was never a chore, but neither was it the 1-2 day read the other ones were.

Granted, I’ve literally read like 600 books since the last book dropped as well, so I engage with books pretty differently now too. A bit more analysis on what did and did not work. I did notice, for instance, that with the YA prose I was pulled out of the text fairly often. I know these prose are very much in right now, but I really like vivid description and it does not require more words. More complex sentence structure and stronger verbs and you’re there… now I’m a bit more cultured and spoiled and want/need these things.

But, let’s not forget: it was very good.