I only recently read the shades of magic trilogy. I found it interesting and entertaining. Based on other reviews, it seems I'm the only one who wasn't satisfied with that conclusion. So I'm happy the story continues here. 

Initially, I was a little put off by the beginning as it focused on a few new characters, and it added another narrator to the audio. Michael Kramer and Kate Reading are the best reading duo out there, so adding a third seemed unnecessary or even borderline blasphemy. To her credit, Marisa Calin (the third narrator) starts out a little shaky but ends up blending in nicely with Michael and Kate. I would have preferred it without her, but by the end, I wasn't mad they added her. At least it wasn't a full cast audio. Those always kinda suck. Like a low-budget play. The amount of effort put into it is plapable, but you'll lose some of the magic of the original work. 

One of my favorite aspects of this series is the magical items, and this book really scratched that itch. It made the world of Red London feel more magical. I thought it was well done. 

One of my beefs with this book is the way time is handled. There are time jumps and flashbacks, and even events in other worlds. It made it difficult to keep track of one characters story in relation to another. Made the story feel a little rough. 

However, my biggest beef is the fact that the characters aren't even curious about what is happening in the other worlds. Yes, there is one character that mentions and thinks about this, but not to the extent it should be. After the events of the first trilogy, you would think that they would want to keep regular tabs on what these other worlds were up to. It's like they didn't learn any lessons.