The worst of the series thus far, which is disappointing given that said series began so strongly with Jackaroo. Look, Voigt's writing is as good as ever here: she's talented at putting words together and I enjoy her style, and in all honesty it has to be said that this book ended very strongly. Not strongly enough, however, to counteract the protagonist, who was horribly off-putting - something not helped by the fact that the text was determined to batter me over the head with his apparent wonderfulness. While he had a few good points, they were consistently overshadowed: Oriel is one of those personalities that counts loyalty as a good... but only when directed towards other men. Every women he meets he fucks over, willingly and emotionlessly, and I seethed through most of the book, hoping beyond hope that someone would kill this unpleasant little prick in order to put him out of my misery. Well, what do you know? :)

Griff, on the other hand, is eventually a decent character - but he's essentially a cipher until the last 50 odd pages, where he suddenly becomes so thoughtfully interesting I'm even more annoyed he wasn't the main character all along. I strongly suspect, to be honest, that Voigt is making a deliberate commentary on trauma and heroism, showing that a life dedicated to stepping on others to get to the top and general violence isn't the recipe for a happy ending, but though I admire that approach and see the point of it I hate the protagonist too much to care. Perhaps if the book had been better balanced between the two of them, but it wasn't.

I'd never read Voigt before this series, but she's so much more interesting when writing women. Her main male characters - Orien in book 2 and Oriel here - are puffed up by narrative beyond all their deserts, while the women are more thoughtfully managed - at least when out of the orbit of their so-called romantic interests.