Nice entry in signature Melissa Marr style - complex fantasy court politics and interpersonal intrigue, relationship drama alongside world-changing stakes, solid and engaging characters and romances, appealingly weird and dangerous faeries... Wraps things up nicely for the series (not sure if this is a duology or just a tidy ending to book 2.) It does seem to suffer from too large a cast with not enough length to hold them all - bouncing between viewpoints and characters makes it hard to emotionally invest and follow the motivations, a common problem with multi-POV large-cast stories... but you've got to give her credit for the complex plotting. On a possibly-related note, there was a surprising number of typos and rough phrasing/word choice issues for such an established author and strong publishing house, making me wonder if her publisher or someone on the team has been dropping the ball on resourcing her books well enough. I've seen some great stuff from Marr, and it would be sad if she's not getting enough support to keep putting out awesome books :(
