Okay so... what happened?

This whole book I was waiting for something to happen. And yet??? nothing. And I also feel like all of the characters fell flat in this book as well. And the world was rich and decadent, but the characters became so gray and boring in contrast. I feel like we had the same 5 scenes in the same order throughout the entire book. I'm honestly pretty disappointed.

And as someone who studies literature, a pet peeve of mine is the use of deus ex machina. Just so lazy and that alone definitely brought down the rating for me.

It didn't match up to anything we had established in the first book. Ru's entire character is being a passionate scholar, but by the end she's perfectly willing to play into this god ideal. And with the help of this horrible literary tool, it becomes the big shock of the story. We could have had a great novel about the science of magic and overcoming religious ideals using magic in a scientific way, but no.