Posted by I adored the first book so I was ready to jump on the ARC offer from the author — thank you to Rachel Aaron. Also, apologies for being late. For some reason I thought this was an October release but it’s not, it came out 9/30 and so if this review sounds good to you, go ahead and pick it up!
This story picks up almost exactly where we left off (love that). The world also starts expanding almost immediately, there’s a scene where Adrian starts using bone magic to talk to dead Sorcerers which was really neat. So, the plot basically to this whole book is — fuck with the Princes, get Gilgamesh’s attention, hit him where it hurts and where he can’t regenerate. Meaning, all these slaves they’re freeing is great and all, but it doesn’t really fuck with Gilgamesh’s power. There are millions of demons and freeing a few thousand here and there really doesn’t make a dent. So, Adrian is suggesting kicking the bees nest by going after the Anchors. The Anchors are the only physical ties between heaven and Earth and their secrets are heavily guarded (like super ridiculously guarded). There’s no information about who even runs these Anchors which is unusual because Warlocks like to brag about their power and place in the world at every chance they get, so if no one is bragging about running one of these things, they must be bound by secrecy. So, let’s break into one of them, find out how it works, and fuck shit up!
We get a visit from one of Adrian’s family members which was super neat, I love getting more backstory about characters, particularly their family dynamics as it’s so essential to who we are and why we are the way we are. We get a touch more backstory on Bex as well when an old flame shows up and tries to join their party. He’s an ass. I didn’t like him. You’re not supposed to like him.
There’s a fair amount of action in this one as well and I think my favorite scene is one where they’re doing battles in an M.C. Escher type environment. You can run on the ceiling, the walls, gravity is flexible, and it’s dizzying just reading about it. Really difficult scene to pull off but it was done well and it was trippy as shit.
If you’re a fan of Rachel Aaron you’ll know that she writes mostly about cinnamon roll characters. This is not different, all of the characters continue to be the morally upstanding people they were in the last book, but that doesn’t mean there’s no drama between them. Except for Gilgamesh, he’s still a bag of dicks. As far as drama between the main crew — Bex is all like, “man, I need to focus on myself and my people and I really shouldn’t be with Adrian because it’s a distraction and a weakness.” Adrian is all like, “wtf, I thought things were going well?” And so they’ve got that whole will they won’t they vibes going on for most of the book.
Overall this was another fun installment in the series and I absolutely will be continuing on to see how the story progresses!