This might be more a review for the series as a whole rather than this specific book, but I guess we'll see.

I'll start with the good, since there's much less of it. I liked the overall story and the lore or history of the world. It's neat and it was entertaining. All three books did a good job of keeping my attention, so I was able to read everything pretty fast compared to how long it normally takes me to read books, especially a series. There were some things I didn't see coming that I actually liked, some I didn't like. I loved the bickering. Especially moments with Zoya and Genya.

Now for the bad. Where do I even start. This is far from the worst thing I've read but it's not great either. There's so many things I have icks with. First off, the Grisha. If a Grisha uses their power, it makes them stronger, healthier, and live longer lives. Why? How? How does it make them stronger and healthier when the power is coming from them? It doesn't make sense at all. Logically if someone uses a power that comes from themselves, it drains them and makes them weaker. Where is the energy coming from? I know they get exhausted if they use their powers a lot, but they can also use their powers for literal days at a time, which is something they do at some point in this book. And this is just a personal thing, but I'm so tired of the whole "I must hold out my hand very dramatically to use my powers." What do you mean if their hands are tied behind their back that they can't use their powers? Alina is a sun summoner. Girl, just summon the light and turn yourself into a flash bang! It's never explained why they have to hold out their hands to summon. If it was explained then I must have missed it. Something that breaks the story a bit for me is the fact that Alina and the darkling are the only people with the dark/light powers. Again, why? Why are they the only ones? There's nothing special about Alina, and the only slight explanation we have for the darkling and his mom is basically just a rumor or assumption. And specifically with Alina's powers. I was getting so annoyed with her. In the beginning she just magically knows how to use her powers after remembering something. And then later in the same book she re-gains control just because she realized something. And then in this book you're told that that something wasn't even correct! So what was the point?! She barely had to do anything to control her powers just because of thoughts in her brain. Literally anything else, any other reason would have been better.

The actual story was fine but it still bothers me. It feels like so many things happen in this book just for convenience of moving the plot along. So many times people just swoop in to save the day, with the only explanation being "oh yea I was just in the area for something completely unrelated. What a coincidence!". It felt so cheap to have certain things just handed to the characters on a silver platter. Anything that could have happened that would have made an impact on the characters, is almost immediately reversed or fixed so there's little to no repercussions for anything that happens in the plot. And that goes for all 3 books. For almost the entire series, every single character is just flat. It's worst in the first book and gets better as it goes, but Alina still doesn't have a personality what so ever. Mal's personality is just being jealous. Alina and Mal's communication has been absolutely abysmal throughout the entire story. The ending was so disappointing and its frustrating to explain why, so I'm not even going to bother. The chapters are HORRENDOUSLY long. The first 3 chapters take up the first 74 pages of the book. 74! Each chapter is roughly 20 pages long! The last 2 chapters are split between nearly 50 pages! Why?! I can't tell you a single thing that happened in a specific chapter because it would be a million different plots and subplots happening in each one. And it's not even like there wasn't a good place to end a chapter because there were so many opportunities. The author just didn't take them. 18 chapters for a roughly 425 page book is ridiculous.

This was fun and entertaining, but that's about it. I really wish the magic system was an actual system and had at least a little bit of logic behind it. The story could have ended so quickly if Tamar or Tolya just crushed the darklings heart like they did with so many other people. The only good thing about this was Genya, Nikolai. And oncat.