Wow, this was terrible. It takes a weird kind of talent to take everything that was interesting about the premise, setting, and characters of the first book (which had its own share of issues, but nothing like this) and ruin it so thoroughly.

List of Things I Hated the Most:
- This book is like 80% exposition. Characters talk to each other. Then they move to a new location and talk some more. Oh, here are two more characters heavy-handedly talking about plot points and their motivations instead of doing literally anything! Even the "action" scenes manage to be boring af. How.
- The magic system and rules of the world become increasingly nonsensical, especially the distinctions between common, high, and life magicks. The rules seem to shift whenever convenient, usually to fuel or resolve some character drama. (I say drama because I REFUSE to call anything in this book 'character development' lol.)
- Yeah, I did not care about any of the characters or anything that happened in this book, despite not feeling that way in the first book.
- Stupid plot detours/decisions. Maybe if they had kept the focus on the 5 champions and given them something interesting to do, I would have cared at least a little. No, I don't need your random government, press, and spellmaker plots that go nowhere and add nothing to the story. Please no.
- Did they really add a new 6th champion just so they could neatly pair up the characters into couples? Yep, that's exactly what they did. Love having THREE romances with next to no development, believability, or emotion in them!

Are we sure that this book is itself not some kind of curse, trapping us in our own Blood Veil until we finish the trial of reading it and/or kill our way out?