I absolutely loved Storm from the East. It did an amazing job of building on the romance and plot of the first book. The stakes felt higher, more places and characters (all interesting) were introduced, and the character arcs really felt well developed. I think the novel does good with expanding on the moral questions and challenges of war introduced in the first book and presents very unique and complex characters. I think this was an amazing middle book - it felt like it had a real purpose and arc to it, while still building to something more. Also, I'm just so invested in all of the characters. There isn't a single character I don't want to have more scenes with, and there's so many mysteries to each of them that I want to find out.