I really liked it, it managed to surprise me for the direction it took (especially concerning the final villain) and at the same time gave more depth to the characters that inhabited the first book. I was especially delighted by Ruza, Tzara, Calixte and Thyon - I really liked how they became their own little group and developed a little side adventure of their own. Finding out more about Skathis and Isagol and Korako was, to be honest, heartbreaking. But at the same time it made clear what they actually were as beings and as characters, so that was interesting. I liked how both the villains (in "Strange the Dreamer" and in this one) were never really one-dimensional, but both came from a tragic past that moulded them. I could never really hate either of them from the beginning - the only hateful character has always been Skathis (and in a smaller part Isagol, but just because she was less present than him). I liked the open ending, since they decided to focus on such a huge task that it would have felt cheap to have everything answered in the last ten pages, but I still hope that we’ll get to find out how it went.
