Fiza, however--God bless her--had stopped finding anything about his transformation intimidating and treated him with her normal base level of rudeness. I understand the choices that were made, and why they were made, but with semi-heavy emphasis on character relationships – especially the ones between Nahri, Ali and Dara – I was kind of hoping for a little more.

The final volume presents characters you already love mixed with a bunch of exciting fresh faces, sustains a wicked pace of action throughout, and gives you plenty of reasons to stay up very late reading.This setting invited an examination of Nahri’s personal evolution since book one, the ways in which her newfound powers and her found-family have both changed her and helped strengthened her existing identity. But the bloodletting and loss of his beloved Nahri have unleashed the worst demons of Dara’s dark past. There’s quite a bit of focus on both Nahri and Ali discovering their heritage in this book, which was really great.

This book also taught me that I don’t have a favorite POV character because my favorite is whoever finds themselves in Daevabad. While Nahri finds peace in the old rhythms and familiar comforts of her human home, she is haunted by the knowledge that the loved ones she left behind and the people who considered her a savior are at the mercy of a new tyrant. So when Manizheh takes control of him, I know I’m supposed to feel bad for him and I also did to a small degree.Seeing those come to fruition here is the main reason I couldn’t put the book down; it kept drawing me back, forcing me to read “just one more chapter” — and we all know how that turns out.