At this stage, the conveniently happy ending for all characters felt unsatisfying. Yet the rushed plot lead to an unsatisfactory ending, in which everything fell into place far too easily and the villain basically defeated himself. While this doesn't cut as deeply as I would like (we don't even get to see all of the Fates in person), it was intriguing to learn more about them and I did appreciate some of the creativity of their design, such as the Maiden Death's cage of pearls. As there is little exposition in the story, most of what we learn is revealed in snippets which give a glimpse of the larger picture, reminding much of how the Tales of the Hinterlands are sparingly used in Melissa Albert's 'The Hazel Wood'. The most interesting thing about the story is that we do get to learn more about the Fates. Almost all of this occurs off-page and so we don't really see much of her learning about the depths of her power or interacting with him at all. We don't really see much of her time as the Fallen Star's prisoner, even though she remains near him for almost more of the story. Similarly, Scarlett's mission often feels as though it is rushed, shoehorned into the plot between Tella's chapters. Instead, her story was too bogged down with her love triangle with Legend and Jacks - something that feels a little pointless at this stage as the reader is never in any doubt who she will wind up with. Although she learned early on where she could discover the Fallen Star's secret, it took her an incredibly long time to actually make an attempt at finding this. Tella's investigations frequently got derailed. While a majority of the story was just build up to an admittedly exciting climax, it still felt as though everything was just being too rushed.
The pacing of the novel this time also felt a little off. Magic this time is mundane and practical - used to hurt or even torture and not carrying the beauty of the first instalment. There is no Caraval this time around - little sense of magic or whimsy. The novel had more in common with Legendary than Caraval, yet I still felt the loss of the magical settling more this time around.
While I've never been a huge fan of this series, I was still disappointed to find that this was the weakest instalment of the three.
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