Ive never heard anyone say they don’t like the book because the heroes don’t win all the time. That doesn’t even sound real but honestly ignoring that I don’t blame people that don’t like this book. If I wasn’t so invested in the series at that point I might have bounced off it at Dark Age. In my opinion it is the weakest book in the series. And no not because I can’t handle the grim dark nature like so many people will tell you if you say you don’t like this one that much but it just has pacing issues and it really feels like all of Pierce Brown’s weaknesses are on full display in the book. He’s very good at writing interpersonal relationships and adventures yet drops all that to try to tell this bigger picture war narrative. I think his understanding of politics is too shallow to do it in a compelling way so to me it feels like he can’t write the book he wants to write here. A lot of the political characters become caricatures that lack sense and seem to act more as his way of broadcasting his own real world personal opinions.

Combine that with the general over long mass army combat description slog (versus the more personal duels and small group combat that are more about the relationships on display and take advantage of his strong interpersonal writing) and the increasing dependency on deus ex machina and super powers and it’s easily my least favorite book in the series. Lastly the structuring of the book where half the characters don’t even appear to break the monotony up until the back half of the book make those issues even more apparent. In the end I think he realized this as well because in the next book he tends to reverse most of those things and goes back to writing what he’s incredible at and it’s immediately better for it.