I promise I'll never roll my eyes again when a sequel book re-explains what happened in the previous one, because damn, this was terrible.
It's been 15 months, how am I supposed to remember who Felix or Kylynn are ?!?!?! (I actually still don't know who Kylynn is and I read the whole book)
It doesn't take much, just a short explanation the first time they're mentioned in the book! Maybe this way I wouldn't have spent the first 150 pages being entirely lost. Or just a longer character list at the beginning.
Similarly,

why are the isles that made up 50% of the book not on the map

?

The plot was nice (once the first 150 pages of confusion were read). The

exploration of the isles was really interesting, it kinda felt like an 'cultural sampler' lol

. It was definitely my favorite part of the book.

Rip Trager, I liked him, but then he said "that's my favorite isle yet" when landing so of course he died 🥲

Violet annoyed me sometimes,

mainly because of how stubborn she is when it comes to trusting Xaden. Thankfully Ridoc was here 😌

I'm glad we got Rhi and Imogen's pov for a chapter each, I hope it'll be more common in the next books.

Aaric was such a highlight of the book!!!!

I hope we'll see more of him (especially with given his signet). But really I like how he's just quiet and thinking until it's usefully for him to act (that's too rare in this book lol)

I feel like the gods where more important in this book than in the previous two, so wonder if they'll be even more relevant in the next two

I debated how to rate this book for a long time, because it feels like I strongly disliked or did not care for a chunck of it and adored the other half 😅, so 3.75/5 it is