3.5 stars.

The sense of characters and setting is much less immersive than in SoC, which is perhaps ironic since most of the book is written from Alina’s first-person POV. (Also, the countries’ real-life counterparts are pretty transparent based on the culture and language; this is often the case in fantasy with multiple separately-ruled regions, whatever they’re being called, but I’ve always found it a little disappointing.) It feels businesslike, even militant, in its descriptions of place and plot, but the major twist is well-executed and unexpected, if not wholly original, and at least partly makes up for the love triangle.