UPDATE 9/5/2016: I know why I didn't like this one as much.
Spoiler hidden - I didn't like (HATED) that Kip married Tisis. It seemed like such a boneheaded move by someone who should have been smarter than that. And I never bought that he was backed into a corner to justify the move.
But I guess I swallowed that distaste a bit better this time and wanted to give it an extra star. I still wish the book had been longer, and wish even more that this was a trilogy. I want to know the WHOLE story NOW! Weeks is really doing a great job with this series. It is firmly on the re-read shelf.

ORIGINAL REVIEW: I'm not sure that I liked this one as much as the previous books. For much of the book, I kept asking myself when something was going to happen. Nor did I feel that the character development moved along enough to account for the 'delay in action'. Don't get me wrong--the book was good--it might be a more fair assessment to assume that we should have gotten one really long book to end the series instead of two. While enjoyable (very), I came away feeling like this was a bit of half a story. ( )

Brent Weeks is een hele goede in het bouwen van werelden. Hoe verder het verhaal gaat, hoe meer je meekrijgt van de magie, de religie, de onderlingen verhoudingen tussen de verschillende groeperingen en ga zo maar door. Ook de karakters blijven verrassen en boeien. Er zitten aardig wat thema's in de boeken die mij interesseren. Groepsdynamieken, dysdfunctionele families, een samenleving in verval, maar ook een samenleving die veranderd, die bezig is om te ontdekken waar ze voor staat. Slavernij, rangen en standen, verstand versus gevoel, eigen overleving versus overleving van de groep, de vraag wat leiderschap inhoudt en ga zo maar door. Het is ingebakken in een spannend avontuur wat van begin tot eind boeit. ( )

Flesh protuberance ( )

The plot twists keep on coming.

Gavin takes a bit of a back seat to Teia and Kip in this book, but he’s still my favorite character. His story arc is gut wrenching and kept me on tenterhooks through every line.

The villains really start to flesh out in this book, the weakest of these being the Color Prince. He’s predictable, tropey, and boring. The good news is there’s plenty of other villains with better character detail to make up for what Koios lacks. The Order, Andross, Zymun. Take your pick.

Karris and The White finally start to take off in this installment. I especially enjoyed The White’s passages. She’s very well written and unendingly quotable every time she speaks.

While this book doesn’t move quite as fast as the previous one, it’s still extremely well written. The world and magic system really are explained well in this book. You become invested in the fate of the Seven Satrapies and more understanding of the significance of the events happening because of a better fleshing out of the history behind the world and the Chromaturgy therein. ( )

Magic was useful for everything. It just killed you. You should always think of it first. Then you should decide if a little dram of death was worth it.

Just whoa. This book got big. We see a lot more about the world and more about the powers that exist beneath the surface. The world is weird and complicated and everything we thought we knew... well, i9t's mostly right. Just incomplete.

Kip gets a lot more face time and is really growing up. We still get a few cases of Kip the Lip, but he's really starting to come into his own. His relationships with the rest of the characters really drive the book, in particularly Teia. Kip is also one of the main weirdnesses I keep finding with this book is the tonal shifts. Kip has literally killed gods and kings... and now he's back at school. It's intense training, but it still feels completely out of order.

Speaking of Teia, she got a lot more interesting than I expected her to. A lot of her character development seems to come from serving two masters and she could likely get out of the whole mess if she just talked to someone... but it's still complicated enough that we'll give it a chance. I'm curious how this turns out.

Gavin... oh Gavin. I'm not sure where that storyline is going on now. He's going through hell and gets barely any relief. Then there was this bomb, just dropped at the end of a chapter and never really looked into again:

Thirty hours later, Gavin killed the last man just before the sun rose. And he went to his chambers, and for the first time since he’d brought hell to earth, he drafted black luxin.

And oh that ending. Really makes me wonder what's even real...

Karris. Oy. She's pretty badass. Good to see something going right for someone at least.

Liv? Good riddance. She's only in a few chapters. Probably going to have to deal with her in the next book, but so it goes.

Overall, a solid entry in the series. I'm curious where it goes from here. ( )