Sadly my enthusiasm for the story took a nose dive with this book. The story of Clara following the army was just ridiculous and silly and felt completely forced. Also not in love with Cithrin's economic innovation as the big climax of the book. I love the idea of banking and fiat currency being brought into High Fantasy, but this was very clumsy and on-the-nose, not as interestingly told as I would like.

What I did like was the depiction of Antea's sprawling empire starting to get a bit threadbare, coupled with the problems in the Spider Goddess cult. I admire the author's discipline in telling a 5 book arc and appreciate that things are starting to come to a natural conclusion at the end of book 4.