A fantastic continuation to her The Gilded Ones series, Forna comes out strong in this second novel with an action packed plot. The creation of her world continues to impress, with a lot of complicated political and social culture.

Forna has a gift for world-building. There is a lot going on in this world and the complexity just continues to grow, with surprises in store from start to finish. The writing and construction are clever and clearly have a lot of planning behind them. This is an intricately built story.

There were moments where the inclusivity felt a little heavy-handed. Though it plays an important role in the plot development for this novel, it came a little out of left field as it wasn't used much in the first novel. This made the tendency to create so many LGBT+ characters feel a bit forced, as if part of a ploy to gain wider readership, rather than a natural progression of the plot. Had the inclusivity been a bit more well rounded in the first read it may not have felt quite so spur of the moment. In conjunction with this, the character work isn't as in depth as it was in the first installment. So, while the reader does get a great picture of Deka and her progression/change throughout the plot, the secondary characters are not as well investigated and included. I appreciated the thought behind the characters, but felt that the execution was not quite as impressive as in the debut.

The writing remains gorgeous and each move of the plot was smooth and well thought out. The pacing was a bit slow through the middle of the novel simply due to some repetitive scene work to build some tension and background, but then revived to an explosive and tense pace for the last third of the read.

Overall, a great second installment in this trilogy and an excellent demonstration of Namina Forna's immense writing talent. I am really looking forward to reading the conclusion of this series.