Met new characters and caught up with some older ones. Again, there are intrigues everywhere. Like her brother, Lillian DePaul is blackmailed into working for the OSPies. Novel had a satisfying conclusion as opposed to the first book's cliffhangers. I look forward to reading the next book. ( )

DNF at 42 pages. This is one of my harder DNFs because I absolutely loved the first book. War-time intrigue with a sexually ambiguous male lead! This one... it's from the POV of different characters, takes place at a different time and different place, and it's just... maybe too ambitious. The author threw in a bunch more characters, nationalities, countries, etc. that made the plot hard to keep a hold of. Maybe if I re-read the first one and then went straight into this one I'd have an easier go of it but this one is going back in the stack.

I wanted my high expectations to pan out for this one, but I was a little disappointed.

It's not a bad book by any definition, but it kinda picks up with the same characters under wildly different circumstances. From stage performance and spywork and blowing up the art district to becoming a revolutionary grunt or rubbing nobs with diplomats years down the line.

It might have been rather cool. In concept, it might even work. But in this particular instance, the enjoyment I had with the previous novel went down the drain for a pretty long stretch until the new/old characters came back to life... figuratively and literally.

Spies, bombers, and angling for a full civil war did manage to keep this from being unentertaining. The writing has a lot of quite cool moments and the end makes up for much of the meh. It's occupation Europe in a lite-fantasy setting, after all. We've all seen a lot of this in literature and movies, and this one doesn't even have any fantastical elements. Just the names have changed.

I can't say it's at all bad, but it isn't wonderful. The one thing it has going for it is the LGBT elements. ( )

This was wonderful. I enjoyed it even more than the first one, the vivid and fragile characters, the twists of their secrets, the inexorable coil of their motivations, the way they tangle and chafe. It's so perfectly poised for so much of it that the spate of things-getting-done at the end is almost a shock, but also utterly satisfying.

And oh, Lillian DePaul. MY GOSH I LOVE HER. ( )

https://tamaranth.blogspot.com/2019/05/201957-armistice-lara-elena-donnelly.html ( )