"Gods require worship, and the purest worship is sacrifice."

Where do I even start with this?

I've been hesitant to pick this up ever since I read The Gilded Ones last year and felt extremely conflicted about it. I had found some parts excellent and other parts decidedly not. But I loved the excellent parts so much that I ultimately wanted to give book 2 a chance.

And in so many ways, it was such an improvement from book 1. Without giving spoilers, the story took the exact direction I was hoping for, the writing remained fantastic, and a lot of the things that made me feel weird

i.e. Deka's first kiss happening while her head is literally separated from her body like some scene from Robots

were absent.

I saw some people saying that this book lost all sense of feminism and to those people I would like to suggest other reading materials such as "Reading Comprehension for the Purposefully Dense". Yes, this book was a slightly less... female rage centric story; no, it did not lose all feminism. In fact, I would argue that this simply introduced its audience to a more complex feminism and the realization that the same systems that oppress and harm women, also harm people of other gender identities, orientations, abilities, and even simply men that from day one have been hammered into a shape they never chose; a fact that is inarguably true.

They did not lose their feminism, there was even plenty of female rage directed at what women experience at the hands of men but! they simply realized that acting as if women are the only beings harmed by these systems is inaccurate.

Now, while I am incredibly grateful and impressed by Namina Forna's abilities and willingness to discuss this complex issue, I do feel like it could have been handled a bit better at times. Insinuating that the most perpetrators of harm to queer men are other queer men was problematic, even if I do understand the root of the point being made.

I did struggle a bit with the characterization in this one, which surprised me because an aspect I loved of The Gilded Ones was the extremely vivid cast of characters. This book, however, had characters that almost felt like a direct-to-video Disney sequel; they're the same characters, yes, but the voice actor is wrong, the animation is off, and the dialogue seems to have lost some of what made that character so real in the original movie.

This seemed to extend to the romantic relationships as nearly everyone (and I mean everyone, save a single aro/ace character) was paired up with somebody. It felt oddly rushed, despite the fact some of the couples weren't revealed until the very end of the novel? I understand that this may have been a... side-effect of their age and the graphic things they're experiencing, leading them to need romantic comfort but it still felt forced.

That's really such a minimal part of the story and there's so much to be praised here. I loved the fact that - for how graphic the violence can get in this series - it is treated as graphic and horrific. Too many stories show overwhelming violence/abuse and simply gloss over it, the characters returning to their daily life with minimal scars to show for it (except for maybe a well-timed anxiety attack for the sake of furthering the romantic subplot, which is so annoying.) This series doesn't do that.

Things are dark and bleak and horrific; the characters all witness and experience indescribable horrors and have to keep moving. We see the moments that they fear what they've been through is too much for them and we see the choice to keep going. Each of the characters has their own trauma and ways of handling it, and though we mainly see through Deka's experience, there's never a moment where it feels like the darkness is ignored for the sake of a fast plot.

Overall, this was really such an improvement from book 1 (which was already good!) and in many ways, this was exactly what I had hoped it would be. If you struggled with book 1, I would recommend giving this one a try. Especially if you love corrupt gods, found family, an animal companion (I love him, your honor), and a main character that constantly has to accept that everything she knows to be true is very possibly a lie.