There is a LOT going on in this book, even leaving aside the usual “I know I read the first one, what happened” and the slow Celine Dion-ing* as the book continued and I remembered why I cared. 
It was a little darker than I wanted. I was surprisingly okay with Malini as a character and leader doing what she needed; there are ways in which the world betrays these characters that made the book—for all it was incredibly intricate—hard to read and hard to want to continue. At a certain point it felt like I wasn’t sure what they were actually fighting for. And the ways that the world gets pulled out from under the characters makes it hard to feel like I’m rooting for anyone and I want to root for my characters. 

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*meaning it’s all coming back to me now