Coming to this book after finishing The Tawny Man trilogy is harsh. It definitely lessened my enjoyment of this book, because honestly I just want to get through The Rain Wild Chronicles so I can start reading Fitz and the Fool.

Additionally vexing is that once again, this book is full of new characters. Why? I was very annoyed at this because why couldn't this story have been told with all the characters we know already from The Liveship Traders? I guess there are plenty of reasons, but my patience for new characters was at zero, especially since, as mentioned before, I just want to go back to Fitz and the Fool. Well, some characters from Liveship Traders make appearances, which is great, but they're only side characters that appear rather briefly.

But what about this book when looking at it outside of its context (if that is even possible)? I thought it was alright, but I have to admit I became more interested in reading once I saw a very spoilers, namely that there are LGBTQI+ characters here, and that the 3 main characters that all start out with their individual plot lines, eventually converge (and bond).

The main characters are Leftrin, Thymara and Alise. I hated Leftrin at first, but he became more interesting once he met Alise. Alise seems incredibly naive, reading her part was alright, but also a bit infuriating that she couldn't see what was really going on with that utter asshole Hest (and Sedric). Thymara is interesting as well, but I'm still waiting for interesting plot development on her.

The most interesting thing about this book is perhaps all the lore that we learn about dragons. This is, after all, something that the entire series has been working towards. It's a bit pitiful though to see that all the efforts of Ship of Destiny turned out as they turned out here. 

The book ends rather apruptly and was obviously just setting things up for the rest of the series. Well, we'll see where this goes...