5/7/25: For me, this has middle book syndrome. I feel like she lost the plot and this was more so a bunch of side quests that might have worked better as a collection of short stories. Deonn has said something along the lines of "this is the book the series needed but not the one I intended to write" and I think it shows. Multiple, inconsistent POVs. There is memory loss in a character so we have to "re meet" a bunch of characters that are already established for the reader and it just felt so unnecessary to have to re-develop them because of the memory loss. It felt like filler, honestly. And I think that is largely what this book is. Legendborn was originally planned to be a trilogy. Then they got popular and the publisher saw dollar signs and decided to extend the series. So, then boom, we get a filler book for a story arch that should have stayed a trilogy. I did like the ending, but aside from that very little actually happens, IMO. I enjoy a slow burn character driven novel, don't get me wrong, but these characters stories and development already happened in previous books. Because of the memory loss trope, it was just a repeat of that same exact development.