This was another one of my book club picks, We read it in A Hobbit's Guide to Adventure. It is the second book in the duology and I didn’t like this as much as I did the first book. I feel like some of the book could have been cut down and the duology made a standalone. Book one was the buildup that was preparing us for the conclusion. I think I didn’t like book two as much as the first was because we went from all this political intrigue, challenges, and diving into tea magic to suddenly Ning can’t use her magic because a hovering dark entity will be able to locate them. She goes off on a quest of sorts which I did enjoy a bit of that, but the tea magic that really lured me into the story wasn’t as relevant since they had to rely on outside source magic. I think it was really hard to compete with what the first book brought to the table.