Kalyna’s a fun character to be sure, but the primary way she interacts with you, the reader, is more like a meta-level observer describing a roleplaying game system. I lost track of how many times something pretty basic about the world was repeated to me again, to make sure I didn’t miss it– “Four armies in this one kingdom, itself one of four kingdoms in a larger country, all desperate to tear each other apart.” I didn’t read the book in serial format or spread out over weeks of game nights. I just read it straight through. I can be trusted to remember the basic structure of the world, friend.

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