actual rating: 3.5

This took awhile for me to get into but I'm going to assume that's on me because I didn't read the first trilogy so I had to spend a lot of time remembering who all the main characters were. I definitely recommend the audiobook for helping with this because the guy who does it has unique voices for all the characters so that really helped. This one leans a lot more heavily on high fantasy tropes than Seven Blades in Black but still a pretty interesting and fun read overall. Definitely gonna check out the next book.