The third in the 'Red Queen' series, Mare Barrow's story continues with her at King Maven's mercy. Imprisoned in Whitefire, surrounded by Silent Stones and Silvers that have the ability to dampen her lightening, she is forced to watch as the boy King manipulates and threatens those she cares about. But at Court, all is not as it seems...

This book has a very similar pace to 'Glass Sword'; the majority of the book is spent waiting and watching, building up to a climactic final battle. The problem is, where the last book did something for character development that necessitated the slower pace, this just felt like it was stuck going round in circles. I'm not sure whether the two could have been amalgamated into one book of a similar length - there's probably too much to include - but certainly the pacing could have been greatly improved by telling these two parts of the tale in a single, slightly chunkier, volume. 

The story itself does continue well and I am enjoying the premise. The layers of intrigue are building and Mare's continued battle to figure out just who she can trust is shared by the reader; there are so many different ways this could go, you become immediately suspicious of any new character (and even some of the old ones!) and their motives. 

However, the more I read of Mare, the less I like her. Her character was great for the first book; a teenager thrust into a world she knows is a threat to her and trying to survive it any way she can. But now she's front and centre of a rebellion, she comes across as quite weak and simple. There's a lot of 'woe is me' attitude, a complete lack of ability to learn from experience and a fair amount of her completely missing the bigger picture until it's staring her in the face. She wouldn't stand a chance against some of the other strong female leads in similar books - Katniss, Tris, Feyre etc she is not.

In this book, the author has started introducing chapters written from other characters' perspectives; Cameron, a newblood forcibly recruited into the Scarlet Guard by Mare, and Evangeline, Maven's betrothed and a scheming Silver lady of one of the High Houses. In short, these two have the strong personalities you'd expect from a lead character, even if they are not 'nice' women. Mare does not compare favourably with either character and this way of writing only reinforces that. And sadly, it doesn't do much for Cal either. Only when he is in the midst of battle, an inferno of flames, does he come across as anything like the Prince he is meant to be. 

The romance element is developing nicely though. This is another aspect that I now think could go several different ways. Ultimately, that question of how everything is going to be resolved is what's keeping me reading, which I suppose is the point! I am looking forward to seeing how this all comes together in the last book in the series, but equally I am preparing myself for disappointment - this is one series where I don't think 'happily ever after' would be an acceptable conclusion for me. But we shall see!