A good follow up to Ninth House. I have to admit I didn't reread the first book and it's been so long it took a minute to remember certain secondary and tertiary characters. This book doesn't give summaries of what happens to the first one but it refers to events and people there so you need that knowledge. But you can get away with no rereading, if being slightly confused doesn't bother you. 

Otherwise, I enjoyed this just as much as the previous one. It was a bit slow in the beginning. But I love slowly putting the puzzle pieces of history, ritual, magic, the supernatural and academia, together. Trip is a new fave character. This one doesn't end on as big a cliffhanger as Ninth House did. 

I kept putting off picking this up and it turned out this was the perfect time of year to read this.