After having read the first few chapters of this book, I was already rolling my eyes at Schwab's indulgence in the vicious, juvenile attitude typical of recent (mostly American) YA towards Christianity - an early conversation between Kell and King George IV (surely the most fair and authentic representation of Christianity that she could have chosen, out of all the Christians in real-world London circa 1820) positions the Red Londoners (who apparently worship magic and the natural elements, which was not a feature in the first book and is only vaguely sketched in this one) as morally superior the eeeevil and stupid Anglicans of Grey London, who worship an invisible man in the sky due to fear of eternal damnation. The one bit of nuance that is given to this conversation is that Kell is unable to explain the point of living well if there is no spiritual consequence to one’s actions (a question which neither this book nor its sequel actually answers). Naturally, no non-despicable Christian characters are ever introduced to provide a balanced exploration of views.

The one other historical Christian (radical dissident Christian, but still) mentioned in the book (but bizarrely, never in connection with any conversation about religion) is my guy William Blake (again), and where do I even fucking start, lmao

Considering how obscure Blake was in his own lifetime, and how few copies of his works existed (Songs of Innocence and Experience was basically only circulated amongst his personal friends), having Lila (who is a cynical atheist) comfort herself with the memory of her mother reading her Blake's A Cradle Song, a poem wherein a mother compares her own baby to baby Jesus, sure was A Choice.

In fact, after the first few chapters, the book almost totally forgets about ideas of religion for several hundred pages in favour of…fucking training arcs, and a Triwizard tournament.

Nothing happens for 350 pages. At the end of book 1, Lila wanted to become a pirate, so in this one, she joins a pirate crew (none of whom have more than a name and a single unmemorable character trait), makes friends with the captain (who is secretly a nobleman, like every fantasy pirate captain from the past 30+ years); the captain is also a wizard, so he teaches her some magic, then she decides she wants to enter this tournament (which Prince Rhy has also arranged for Kell to enter in disguise, that’s the other plotline); the contestants (none of whom have any more characterisation than the pirates) meet up in a tavern, and Lila steals the identity of one of them…

There are some passable attempts at creating parallelisms between Kell and Lila (in order to lay tracks for the romance subplot), but really, all of this could have been summarised in one long chapter. The tournament itself could have been summarised in one or two chapters, because none of the matches really matter (beyond Schwab's idea of 'kewl fight scenes'), really it's just an elaborate and long-winded plot device to create conflict between Kell and the royals when it's revealed that he enrolled in secret. The four Londons (which are supposed to be the unique selling point of the series) could have been just four cities in the same fantasy world, and it would have made no difference.