holy hell I loved this book SO much more than The Thief and the Queen of Attolia. Eugenides and the Queen are such damn sneaky trolls this WHOLE book and it makes it so much more fun that you know the whole time that side characters are blind to essentially a giant royal gag. Speaking of side characters, I freaking LOVE Costis. He's used so well. This book did a lot of political and character development in a really short amount of pages.