This trilogy does not hit as well as the first or third. This book in particular is slow and a bit difficult. Even given all of the backstory and justifiable trauma of Imriel's past, I find myself entirely uninterested in a young white man's violent sexual struggles. Hearing them read aloud on my headphones from a man's voice, too, was something I actually found myself needing to take breaks from, which I did not need to do with any of Phèdre's books. I generally quite struggled with the change of narrator who, it appeared, did not take the time to confer with or listen to the previous narrator and pick up voice or pronunciation cues. Simon Vance is a prolific narrator and I felt as though he spent zero time at all learning the world, idk man, it was a slog and I guess I've got 48 or so more hours ahead of me.