I was hoping to like this one more than the first, but I ended up enjoying it less. They had pretty poor communication skills in the first book, but it felt like they'd carved out some improvements by the end, (learned lessons to share their feelings, not to storm off in anger, etc.), and it felt kinda hopeful. But in this book not only did they not grow much more, they basically lost whatever gains they'd made. It felt like they spent the entire book stupidly keeping secrets, and having spats, and going behind the other's back. Very little time spent just happy or together. And that was interspersed with about 14 different sex scenes (I didn't actually count them, but it feels like it can't be too far off that.)

Persephone in this version is very immature, even for her age, and it makes their already enormous age gap feel much worse. Part of the time she's portrayed as a saintly people person, and then the rest of the time she's kind of bratty. Also, much effort has gone into showing how much she cares about all the souls in the underworld and shame on Hades for not doing things the way she thinks they should be done (knowing almost nothing about any of it), but all that goodwill was entirely undercut when she thinks Hades is cheating on her and tries to *destroy the entire underworld and him!* in revenge. That's nothing close to love in my book. And then Hades, thousands of years old and usually portrayed as crafty, lets himself be trapped into terrible positions like he was born yesterday, when there had always been much better options. It felt out of character and a disservice to canon Hades.

I think the author lost her way with this one. Like maybe she had the setup for the series, and also ideas how it would wrap up, and then wrote a middle book mainly consisting of filler in between. Lots of stuff happened, but really they're not in a very different position than they were at the end of the last book. ( )

I just couldn't continue. I knew about halfway through that I probably wasn't going to continue with the series after this book. I had every intention on finishing it, but the further I got, the more I hated it.

Everyone has turned whiny and annoying, Persephone worst of all. And this weird coming war side plot is just not something I'm vibing with. I think the main reason I stopped so close to the end is that I am actively disliking EVERY character and not in the love-to-hate kind of way. Ugh! I'm so disappointed, because both series' started out great.

I loved it. It intertwines the plot perfectly and explains a lot of what happened in a Touch of Ruin. I love the mythology and how it was twisted for the needs of this book. Thank you, author, I cannot wait for the rest of the series. ( )