I'm really enjoying the Emelan series, specifically the way that Pierce makes these books about communities and their accomplishments (and failures) rather than about the extraordinary individuals who populate the Tortall books. Both great, just different.
This book was particularly...grueling is the wrong word, as is gruesome. But both get at the difficulty of the story she is trying to tell and I think, overall, she succeeds. Although this book felt like it was the least about the mages in training.