The only reason this book gets 4 stars is because of the two chapter cameo. "All the Saints and their ugly mothers," is the biggest gift this book gave me.

Where to start?
This book left me more torn than I wanted to feel about the last book (as of September, 2022) in the Grishaverse establishment. It wounded me with unnecessary death. It left me questioning evil, and how the book deals with evil. It left me feeling like I got an ending but not the ending this series deserved.

My only serious critique?
I really do think the POV method is the way to deal with this series. And I think Bardugo mastered it perfectly in the Six of Crows duology. But I also think old habits die hard. I didn't care for characters that killed my allies, and I don't care for hopeless romance in a foreign country. Let me read about the people I sided with from the start.

It was like this book was a story about three kingdoms instead of one. Two of them we've been taught to hate. Yet we were dragged through them and made to feel sympathy for people in power and what it does to them. We were taught that "the country shapes the person," no matter how evil and cruel they are. But for eternity, that's somehow a different story. Eternity needs eternal punishment but everyone else? They are different. They don't deserve that. And I think that's the issue with making us feel sympathy for everyone in a book except the one who was labeled evil to begin with. It felt like a rushed, almost crude way to get rid of him.

This book was long. It was also dragged out at times. I felt the show of hopelessness made it harder and harder to read the book. It was small moments that made me continue, not the drive to find the end.

I'll read it again one day but I don't feel like it was the best read I've ever had.