The more I think about this book, the more disappointed I am by it. I really enjoyed This Dark Descent, but the sequel loses a lot of the elements that made it a fun read for me. The characters make one stupid decision after another, fueled almost entirely by lack of communication, which was shocking since that was one of the things I appreciated so much about the first book. The relationships all break in some form, and never quite get put back together again. It's not that the author didn't try, it's just that it felt so unconvincing.

Mikira spends a lot of the book floundering between two love interests. One makes her blush uncontrollably with every single teasing remark, and the other...I can't tell why he's even in the running, to be honest. It doesn't really get resolved either way. I kept waiting to like Talyana, but she has one character trait, and it is hating anything and everything connected to Damien, except Mikira because Mikira is innocence personified. Her unreasonable hatred got tedious very quickly. Her "banter" with Reid felt weak. There's just nothing about her that I liked, honestly.

Then there's Damien, who is so different from the person I got to know that it felt like whiplash. The decisions he made didn't even make sense—he is someone who carefully considers everything, and has usually thought 5 steps ahead of everyone else. But now he chooses a very weird alliance, followed by turning on people in a way that feels extreme, unless he is possessed by a demon—but that's Arielle, and yet she seems more in control of her faculties than Damien at this point.

Arielle's story did continue to be interesting, at least, and I enjoyed getting to see that part of the story unfold. As to the rest of the plot, now that there is no more race to fall back on, all we are left with is politics, and it was kind of feeble.