I Liked: the world building, the magic and how it differed from person to person.
I Disliked: most of the characters. Dragon held himself above everyone on his holy crusade and was rude to all around him. Nieshka was dense and ran headlong into trouble without thought of consequences. Falcon was pretty much every stereotypical court wizard with his own hidden agenda to get ahead and usurp the one stronger than him. The king and prince were awful humans. I only liked the Crown Prince, what little we got of him before he bit the dust. I at least enjoyed Kasia and the little prince and princess there at the end.
And the end struggles were well done. But this book would have been better if they had left out 200 pages. It was dense and repetitive. Our young willow witch learning the same damn lessons over and over the hard way because she refuses to listen and Dragon not really teaching her anything so much and commanding knowledge into her thick head.
The Wood and all that revolved around it kept me going. I really liked the walkers. I would be the one keeping the giant stick bugs as pets.
Over all, mediocre but not terrible. I wanted to get this done so I could read Spinning Silver. Now I'm a little worried it will be more of the same dense prose.
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