This is shaping up to be a very solid overall 4 star series.
Personally I found the beginning of this one super hard to get invested in. I was not intrigued at first by the villain (I find just supremely powerful villains kind of uninteresting idk) and it took honestly until about 40% in for me to feel the pacing pick up. From about that point forward though I was interested. There are a few chapters at the mid-way point that are bangers, and had me page-turning like crazy.
I do kind of have a bone to pick with the overall magic system in this series. I find that the way things are described there's not a lot of hard-set rules, and so a lot of the problems the characters face are overcome by them just finding some way to magic their way out of things. Because there aren't really any hard set rules, it seems like they just invent new ways to use the magic to solve their problems, which isn't super satisfying as a reader as we're not figuring things out along with them. Which is a bummer because the magic system itself is really cool, it just doesn't feel completely developed I guess. Anyway, this one def ended on more of a cliff-hanger so we shall see where the final book takes us...

I fear I am most invested in Gregor's character cause he really is getting the shit end of every deal :'(