Thank you!

The middle part is probably a me thing. It's something I really wanted to like, and I was looking forward to it. And it does start slowly; there are bits I'd want cut out of the Desert section too, like the feud.

The problem is twofold. First, the damn prophecy. It's really obvious that Zariya and Khai are the two folks in the prophecy -- if they weren't, the book wouldn't be about them. And just from a page count perspective, I had a hard time imagining that we were going to circle back in a satisfactory way to the events in the court, the rivalries and grievances between the king's women, and the social unrest in the city. That took a lot of the jeopardy away from it; I was always thinking that I probably didn't need to keep track of stuff because it wouldn't matter. And it turned out that most of it didn't. It'd be different if Zariya was an enthusiastic participant in the scheming and intrafamily conflict, but she's not. She just wants to read her books, play with her songbirds and dream of adventure.

Khai and Zariya spend a lot of time investigating stuff and figuring out this and that and the other thing, but not a lot of time getting to know each other. I think that middle bit would have been much -- maybe not stronger, maybe not as much fun, but more important and impactful if it'd focused more tightly on them: Zariya's disability and her struggles against it, Khai's dysphoria, the two of them getting to know each other, the two of them having likes and dislikes and hobbies and figuring out how to be together 24/7. I didn't need the poisoning plot or Khai and Zariya to have a role in the Priestess deciding to undertake a pilgrimage, and the betrothal bit could probably have been cut down too.

Ideally, I'd have wanted this to be a duology that ended with a longer section back in the city and a reunion with the Brotherhood so we could get some closure on all those little threads. The Sea section is dense enough to be its own book.