I turned to my husband at about the 300 page mark, and I said, "I feel like I'm playing YA Bingo." This book was HEAVY on the teen angst and melodrama, and very weak on the story. The whole premise of this sequel is that our ragtag group of allies is going to recruit /more/ allies, and then go kill Morgane. Spoiler alert, they don't really succeed at either. Instead, I lost count of the number of times characters:
- Lied or Lied-by-Omission to someone they care about "for their own good".
- Attempted to commit a self-sacrificing act, only to be admonished for acting a martyr, and then trying to /out/-sacrifice the person they admonished.
- Insisted they loved a character who was toxic for them.
- Hand-waved violence as a necessary evil to defeat a greater evil... only to falter and "refuse to stoop to their level" when confronted with said grander evil.
- Relied on prophecy/fortune telling/someone saying something is fated to come true.
- Hand-waved spying animal spirits, whispering woods, voices in their heads, and cryptic riddles from a wraith, a god, and the villainess herself, on the grounds that, "Meh, can't be that important, let's move on!"
- Got stuck in a self-deprecating mental/emotional spiral.
Everyone thinks they are worthless. Everyone is miserable and closed off from one another, a team in name only. Maybe that was the point, to show our heroes at rock bottom before they make a scrappy comeback in book 3? But it was painful to read 500+ pages of hopelessness and angst. Often the characters take agency in a sudden fistfight, but almost never do they take agency to /resolve a conflict/, which makes most of their pain self-inflicted.

On another note, what I loved most about the first book was that it took two people of disparate religions (a Christian and a Wiccan) and had them cautiously learn about each other, admit and work though their prejudices, and ultimately learn to love each other. That's a beautiful message: Other people have value; we can learn to be wise and caring without demonizing difference.
But this sequel seemed to go back on that message, adopting more of a conservative Christian stance. Women who practice witchcraft are doomed to madness. The lead witch, Lou, converts for a hot minute when hope seems lost, praying to God for help. Another spoiler alert: An actual to goodness Pagan nature god shows up... and is completely unhelpful, resulting in the death of an innocent. All of the magical characters in this story who /aren't/ Christian are bloodthirsty, sadistic, greedy, insane, or at the very least... apathetic. (Which, some people might argue that apathy is an Evil in its own right!) The Christian characters are lawful, compassionate, forgiving and courageous, even ret-conning foils from the previous book (like Jean-Luc and the Archbishop) to be sympathetic. Christians get redemption, magic-users get pain and suffering... It's a weird stance to take when you've made your audience fall in love with a witch heroine. Maybe I'm over-analyzing, but I personally was left uncomfortable and confused.

Finally, SPOILER SPOILER I HAVE BIG FEELINGS SPOILER, that nature god was Doctor Whovian levels of left-field silliness. First off, to confirm the existence of any god, and not just leave that to the realm of faith and interpretation, especially in a world with competing ideologies, seems like a cheesy misstep. Something in this magical place should be left... /magical/, wild and unknowable, beyond human comprehension. But then, to confirm that a third-party deity is real feels jarring. Imagine, Egyptians and Greeks arguing, "Anubis!" "Hades!" "Anubis!" "Hades!" and Mictlantecuhtli shows up and says, "Guys, guys, guys... Take a deep breath... Okay, bye." Yeah, can we talk about that? The god who shows up claims he can't interfere directly in people's lives, paralyzes Morgane, /releases/ Morgane, admonishes her with "Make better choices" and she responds with "Nope, murder! Hit-and-run!", and he... scuffs his foot and walks off to get a beer? Oh, and turn of the screw: O High and Mighty I'm Staying Out of It is Morgane's ex-boyfriend... How is being romantically involved with a mortal not the EPITOME of direct interference?! This god character was all over the place with his motivation and creed, and the book would have been stronger without him.

All in all, the book left me with no one to root for, no one I wanted to see succeed. And without a character to invest in... why read? Indeed, I walked away from this book many times, finding it too painful or nonsensical to read in big portions. And while I was ready to be done and move on, I was also reluctant to reach the end lest it tarnish my memory of the first book. I hope the third book can redeem the series for me :(.