samantha never fails to do incredible things with her prose and world-building. the book is deeply immersive and poignant in its writing. character development is a solid 10/10. esbar/tuva's and dumai's arcs were the most captivating for me and i truly enjoyed reading about the kingdoms of the far east and south. i did find myself struggling to keep up and unfortunately, i did feel the story dragged intermittently so i was not as engaged as i hoped to be. personally, TPotOT still takes the spotlight in the roots of chaos duology for me. that being said, this has to be one of my all-time favourite high fantasy series. i hope i can dive into this world again.