I've had this book on my TBR list for years at this point and I'm not sure how I never noticed it's tagged as YA. Which was an unpleasant surprise in this case. I'm not familiar with the universe in which this trilogy takes place since I haven't read the prequels but this particular installment didn't feel serious enough. Amidst political drama, murder investigations, unleashing demons, dealing with broken (fatal) magic and a whole myriad of other life threatening problems - the main character somehow had the time to care about a bunch of people she met a few days ago to the extent of risking her life multiple times to save them. The Rookery was a fun bunch of characters, each with their own unique useful set of traits but they were ultimately flat and only used when convenient - same goes for all the rest of the secondary characters including the grandma. Ryxander herself was an annoying protagonist, changing her mind a thousand times and stalling for no reason, pretending to battle morals and family obligations. She was somehow treated like garbage one second and then respected as royalty the next. Most of the confrontations weren't actually explored in-depth and were either miraculously handled in 2 chapters or dragged out until the very end where an actual demon decided to just be nice for a change. I'm sure some of those are revisited in the next two books but I don't think I'll read them any time soon to find out. Something I liked about the book was the representation within The Rookery and the fact that Ryx and Severin were only hinted at as a romantic pair without it turning into full-blown romance cuz I think that would have made me DNF the book.