I don't think I've ever had a 5 star followed by a 1 star in the same series before. I loved The Traitor Baru Cormorant, it's one of my favorite books ever. But I made a huge mistake by not re-reading it before picking up this sequel. There is literally no accommodation to help the reader remember what happened in book one: no hints, no reminders, no recaps, nothing. For essentially the whole book I didn't know who anyone was, and I didn't really care either.
So, it probably would have been better with the whole story fresh in my brain, but I doubt that would have brought it higher than 2 stars. Apparently there's supposed to be 4 books and this one got cut in half because it was too long, so it's basically a bridge to nowhere.
I guess that's it for this series because I can't imagine trudging through another one like this.
1 star.
