That cover though!

Another island-hopping adventure in Visidia gives us a bittersweet ending to this sparkling, inventive, brutal, emotional tale of a princess who has to quickly mature into a queen and more — with a whole lot of help from her friends.

I like Visidia, its magics, and its people quite a lot, but never warmed up to our main character — Princess/Queen/High Animancer/Executioner/Soul Magicker Amora. She's a strong, active lead, but a repetitive and, at times, frustratingly self-centered narrator. To be fair, she is processing (or dealing with the effects of not processing) quite a lot of trauma in this book, which contributes to some of the repetitiveness.

It felt like the writing leaned into that repetitiveness too hard instead of adjusting for it, making it a more difficult read than it needed to be. In some cases, scenes and plot points from the previous book were hammered on, but simple refreshers about characters' backstories were overlooked. Some of the reveals were quite good though, and I can see the ending being a tear-jerker for some.

Content notes: blood magic, combat, execution, and torture; loss of a parent; grief; narrator with nightmares, panic attacks, symptoms of PTSD; lying to loved ones

My thanks to NetGalley and Macmillan for a digital ARC