These are surprisingly slow reads for me in light of the general easy pace of the reading, and yet, they’re savoury slow, long cook kind of pot-simmering characters who linger between the parts when they aren’t taking centre stage, who develop in the shadows of the bits we don’t get to read, and there’s a simplicity and a profundity about it that begs me wonder how Bardugo makes that happen.

Nina is hands-down my favourite character with her sharp edged polyglot whip of a tongue, fast hands, and steady heart; there is so much more beyond the beginning and end of this story that we have yet to explore with Nina. I feel it. And if Leigh Bardugo doesn’t write it, it’ll probably happen in my dormant imagination anyway. Adventure and love and miracles shall abound…

Inej gets what we truly want for her, no mourners regrets but time lost in the in-between.

Full of dark addictions, insecurities, injustices, and revenge, every character uses their time to grapple with the impossibility of their own fight, and their irreplaceable role in the great fight for freedom. It has all the twists and turns of a wholly unpredictable plot (though we know ultimately where this is going. ish.) but the apprehension whispers that just around the corner another genius plan is going to fall off a spire and go splat on the dirty streets of The Barrel.

You can’t just pick this up and read it in one go, you really have to let it sit, set a little time between the chapters, tuck the characters into your day and see where they end up, what they do in the time they’re not speaking from the page—they seem designed for a sort of extended life… and then in the end, which feels more like a beginning, as sailing ships line the harbours readying for departure on The True Sea, and as the soul of a rising Grisha community can be heard again, and a new merchant attitude in Ketterdam spreads, and with unexplored Shu and Fjerda and Zemeni and Kaelish voices yet to be heard, the bones of this world lift and fling like sparkling dust into the winds of imagination…

Where next? There’s so much more yet to be explored. Because, after all, it’s the world of these novels and the rich characters within that keep us coming back for more.