Slightly better than its predecessor, with a few more hits than misses and some continued interest in the world-building, but I still found it rather a slow go, at least until the very end. ( )

What a triumph this book is. ( )

Because the first book in this duology occupied a space of tone and pacing that might best be called "dry", I suspect that few readers made it to this sequel -- and yes, you must read the first book to understand this one, sorry. It's a shame, though, because the sequel is, in this case, actually better. While Parry has managed to maintain the meticulous sense of history in this historical fantasy, the pace here has picked up considerably and the characterization is much more rounded -- including, thank goodness, the characterization of Black and POC figures whose presence was flat in the first book. Here, each of the POV characters -- including Fina, the formerly enslaved West African woman with fascinating magical powers that are unlike anyone else's -- get more balanced space and, since we've entered the Napoleonic Era, there's more action than speechifying this time around. (Don't get me wrong -- I like speechifying and it still exists here -- but the balance is much better.)

Also, SPOILER ALERT...

There's a dragon! And the Kraken! And some naval battles, as appropriate for the Napoleonic moment!

Before you get all excited that this has become an Action Fantasy, however, please note that Williams Wilberforce and Pitt are still very much the center of the show and that means that there are a lot of slow, political moments throughout the book. If you really hated those parts of the first book... well, you probably aren't reading this review anyway. The friendship between Wilberforce and Pitt and their back-and-forth over political and magical reforms gives the narrative a surprising amount of heart and, as unexpected as it was to sympathize with Robespierre in Book 1 (as other reviewers have noted), here one may be surprised about how emotionally attached one becomes to William Pitt the Younger -- you may even find yourself in tears at the end of the novel.

Believe me, that's not a sentence I ever expected to type in my whole life. But here we are.

This might not be your thing, but if you liked the first book in this duology at all, this might just scratch an itch you didn't know you had. ( )