I really struggled with this one. I pushed through it, baffled as to why I was struggling to find the motivation to read it, when about 300 pages in I realised I wasn’t enjoying it. By that point I was committed so I saw it through.

It wasn’t all bad. I really enjoyed the setting, and the secret societies were brilliant (made better by the fact that they’re real, to a degree). It was very atmospheric, with some really cool twists on the paranormal elements, and that went a very long way.

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I had two main gripes with this book. The first is that the story just kind of went on, and on, and on. I wasn’t 100% sure if there were new characters being added in the whole way through, or if they just made little to no impression so it was hard to keep track. It became really hard to keep track of who was who, who was where, who was when, and I didn’t feel much motivation to figure it out.

There were also a lot of very dark and serious themes brought up, but they never really felt resolved or dealt with, which sometimes made them feel almost gratuitous. There was so much potential to the story, but it just carried on with a meandering plot.

Ultimately I was let down by this book, which I had such high expectations for given the amount of hype it has received. Ah well!