Shanti is just amazing. Would've liked to see more of the boys. Marc was featured a bit though. Marc is adorable. And him with Ruisa. I'm shipping that. Ruisa man. She is as awesome as Shanti. She's younger but she's so brave and resilient. This book is as witty and entertaining as the last one. The snark is just perfect. Cayan and Shanti's relationship starts going somewhere too and it's nice to see them respect each other as equals. I also really love the women in this series. They're all so badass. Vulnerable - but badass. This book saw a real sense of equality between men and women. And it was really nice to see women being respected by men for their talents just as much as their bodies. It just goes to show a balance can be struck. ( )

If readers can get through the first two books, the third is much better than the preceding. It still isn't a great book. The mythology of the world is still underdeveloped - the main characters have access to incredible magical power, but there is no growth and development, no learning how to harness this power, and (unlike most YA fantasy books that feature magic) no description of how magic is used; characters simply "stab" with their mind-powers and their opponent dies. Physical combat is an uninteresting catalog of who struck whom with a sword, which gets tedious during the chapter-long battles near the end of the book. The author continues to assume that male and female characters cannot be friends/colleagues without also having a sexual relationship, which is unnecessary and distracts from the plot. On the plus side, the author no longer provides a blow by blow description of the act of coitus, and her references to genitals are less frequent and usually more subtle than in the preceding books.

But aside from its many flaws, the story line is interesting, if predictable for an adult reader. Since the books are available free on Kindle Unlimited (or possibly at your local library), they are worth reading if you have a few hours to kill. ( )

Sometimes the slang that Shanti uses distracts me from the story, for example at one point she uses the term chop-chop to hurry her cadets.

"Chop chop" is a phrase rooted in Cantonese. It spread through Chinese workers at sea and was adopted by English seamen. "Chop chop" means "hurry, hurry" and suggests that something should be done now and without any delay.

How does something like that show up in a fantasy novel, it happened a few times in the first two books as well, but didn't really disturb me as much until this book.

Still the story is worth reading, just hope the author uses fewer colloquialisms in future volumes. ( )

I loved the direction this took - I loved the (rather expected) twist and concessions made... and while I felt like we deserved a little more airtime with *ahem* certain situations, the action held true from beginning to end.

As this is a six-book series, I do worry about whether or not the next books will simply drag towards the conclusion, since the trials that we've been aiming for since the start are now behind us. But I'll trust that Breene has more surprises for us as we move along. ( )