A lot of my complaints about the previous two books in this series are still present in this final volume, but this one slowed down just enough to be slightly more palatable. Once again, we switch perspectives to a different character (Mallachi the white viper seer, who is really the root cause of a lot of the political drama in the series), which I think helped my reading of the book; his story is much more familiar and ingrained in the larger story than our previous narrator and his childhood living within the confines of Midnight lend his dual perspective a lot of credibility and interest. For most of the book we seemed to proceed at a normal pace - characters traveling, gathering intelligence, and making plots to overthrow the vampire regime - but the finale of the book wrapped up much too quickly and left far too much unanswered. The series could really use another book to tell the story of what happened after the fall of Midnight, so I’m hoping that Atwater-Rhodes continues writing in the same universe to give us some closure! ( )