I was so excited to return to the wintry seas in this sequel to Dark Water Daughter, but it fell a bit short of my expectations. The characters still feel underdeveloped to me now nearly 1,000 pages into the story. The pacing of this book also failed to draw me in with its constant jumping around from mini action scene to mini action scene, though the big battle at the end felt more true to a high fantasy finish. My favorite part of this series is still the world building, but even the addition of new creatures and magic systems wasn't quite enough to prevent this from feeling like a slog.