Do not read this review if you haven't read the previous two books. It will not contain spoilers for The Will to Battle but will reference events in Too Like The Lightning and Seven Surrenders.

Somehow, the third installment of this series has gotten even crazier. Palmer manages to answer a bunch of questions the previous two books raised but only by giving us even more things to be concerned and confused about. Mycroft is increasingly getting disconnected from reality, and his reliability as a narrator is tenuous at best. The deeper we get into the book, the more we have to wonder if anything Mycroft tells us is true. My personal theory (based on very little) is that Mycroft is, for sure, crazy, but crazy in a different way than he presents himself in the book. In other words, he's entirely in control of the narrative and manipulates everything and everyone, including the reader. 

The narrative so carefully weaves together so many different threads, showing all the ways war is built and how ridiculous it is. The story focuses so much on the elites of this world, showing how they are the ones who force people into war. Conflict and combat from the everyday person is revolution; when the elites declare conflict and combat, it is war. The reasons they are all going to war are faintly (extremely) ridiculous. 

And that's not even getting into the fact that J.E.D.D. fully believes he is a god. So much for the end of The Church Wars, huh?