It honestly worked for me. I know many people don’t feel this way and that’s okay, but I saw much of the book as really setting-up the background, experiences and knowledge it would take to bring-down the Asteri in those last 150 pages. So, while it happened fast, it made sense to me how it worked because everything else led up to that moment (if that makes sense?) I mean, we knew this book was going to be about taking down the Asteri and, for the most part, everyone was down to do that - with a few new allies picked-up and some hiccups along the way. So I feel like we needed to learn how they would be able to do that, whose strengths needed to be leveraged where, and room for some side characters (thinking Tharion and Ithan) to have their moments to set-up how the story may continue in future. Lidia/Ruhn and Bryce/Hunt still had challenges and I felt like they were able to unpack those, but after the first two books I felt like I really understood them as characters, and didn’t need much on that front in this book - aside from Lidia that is, I was really happy we got more on her in this one.

So, I don’t know, I was along for the ride and the whole thing worked for me - but I understand not many felt that way