I love The Binding and I had such high hopes for this, but found it very disappointing. The world-building feels half-done - I don't insist on everything being tied up in a neat little bow for me but there was too much left completely unexplained in this one, and dead-end storylines that could just have been cut. The first and second halves feel like they're from totally different books, and the ending is rushed and unsatisfying.

I'm giving it 2 stars because the prose is lovely in places.

This also features genuinely breathtaking levels of queerbaiting, very poor depictions of mental illness and suicide, and an uncomfortably TERFy view of What It Means To Be A Woman.