Personal Enjoyment: 4.5/6 Writing Quality: 4/6 Final Rating: 3.25⭐️ (rounded down to 3 for Pagebound)

On one hand, I did have a good time reading this. On the other hand, I could’ve had a better time with some changes.

What I Liked:

• The world building is as impressive as ever. Scribing is still a very fun system to play with. I always enjoy systems that play with the spoken word • Getting to see so much of Berenice’s pov was kind of refreshing. We spent so much time in Sancia’s head in the first two books, that it was a bit fun to have our primary focus be more split.

What I didn’t like:

• This book was nightmarishly slow compared to the first two books. This is baffling considering the timeline of the events of this book. • Scriving has become so complex that about 1/3 of the book is simply explaining the new discoveries and systems. It shouldn’t take this long to keep explaining a system when we are at the end of the story. • The time jump between this book and the last book places a very odd sense of distance between us and the characters. We have missed years of their growth and it’s obvious. You cannot go through the book and not feel the loss. Additionally, the widespread nature of twinning has made the differences between many characters negligible. • The Epilogue. We could’ve stopped at the last chapter. It’s okay to leave a more open and sad ending. We don’t have to wrap it up in the world’s most bizarre little bow (also… what a bullshit ending for Gregor)

Overall, I think this book suffers from becoming too grand compared to the first books of the trilogy. What made books one and two so charming was the “small found family goes on heists” dynamic. This dynamic is almost entirely lost in this finale—favoring grand action and global threat over the charming thieving shenanigans.