The Skull Throne (Book 4 of the Demon Cycle) by Peter V. Brett (3 stars)

This book is actually about the daylight war, i.e. the war between humans, whereas The Daylight War was mostly about the war with the demons, go figure. Minor spoilers ahead.

Brett obviously wanted to explore the political implications of Arlen and Jardir being out of picture while working on their pet project. He intends for any travel to the core to be the subject of the final book, and I assume the climax. But taking two of the most important characters essentially completely out of the story made it sag.

Having said that, full credit to Brett for killing off a major character and some secondary but still important characters. Some people are speculating that the major character isn't really dead. I really hope that isn't true since the story would lose any credibility it currently has.

While the addition of Inerva's POV in the third book was powerful for the story, Ashia's POV that we get in this one was....meh. It felt very formulaic, and it seems unlikely to be important. But hey, what do I know, maybe it will be. In fact, while some interesting things happened, it was mostly setting the scene and putting the pieces in place for the final book. Necessary perhaps but it won't be the book that people rave about from the series.

3 stars.