The consequences of the actions undertaken in the first book handled here are really great. It’s fairly nuanced. Perhaps too granular for my tastes, with the plot beats taking long enough that I noticed the length of the book quite often. Perhaps if I had clicked a bit more with the voice I wouldn’t have minded so much.

But for whatever reason, perhaps the sheer novelty of the setting and characters in the first book being foregone and the larger reveal being a kind of sci-fi staple—though handled better than most books that invoke the trope—I wasn’t quite as invested in this one.

I did really like where the larger plot went from the first one and I do feel like it met my fairly large expectations, coming from the first.