I thought the first book was promising, and my main concerns coming out of that one were "I'm not sure how I feel about the evil church guys being right that magic-users are inherently a pathway for demons to enter the world" and "I sure hope the main character gets a love interest other than the one who dies," which are both addressed in this book to my satisfaction. However, the extent to which this book piles on the misery was just exhausting. It's not uncommon for the middle installment in a trilogy to involve a series of failures and show the protagonist hitting their lowest point, certainly, but it really felt like a lot here. The protagonist loses an arm, then an eye, then gets a massive, disfiguring facial scar, in separate incidents but within a pretty short space of time, and by the third time it just feels gratuitous, not helped by all the emotional damage being heaped on her alongside of it. It's pretty clearly all about making it even more triumphant and cathartic when she stands up against the odds in spite of it all and wins, but there wasn't quite enough of that to offset how unpleasant it was to watch her be constantly brutalized, for me--and the triumph feels a little hollow when you're going "okay, but she still has massive PTSD and has a panic attack whenever she's required to exit her giant robot, though." I'll probably still read the third book, but with some trepidation, and if Heloise isn't somewhat more stable by the end of it I'll probably retroactively like this book less as well. ( )

The first half of this book was something of a slog for me, because it's so dense with battles. Specifically, depressing losing battles, where the characters are constantly on the run and miserable Things picked up in the second half, although there was still a good bit of battling, the pace felt less grinding. I'm very intrigued to read the third installment of the series, to see where things go from here. ( )

Good lord. ( )

The second book follows up right after the previous one with the town reeling from their decision to rise up against the Order. They are quickly on the run when the Order comes back to finish them off. The villagers find refuge with the Traveling People that help them rescue one of their own from the Order but decline to be drawn into their battle. They are given a few supplies and they decide to take over a town to protect themselves from the troops they know will come after parting ways with the Traveling People. The rest of the story moves along at a blazing clip and now I’m impatiently waiting on the third book.

Digital review copy provided by the publisher through NetGalley
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More fighting, this time Heloise is gaining more allies and more injuries.

It's interesting but somehow a bit gorier than I really enjoy. ( )