** spoiler alert ** 
 Now that it has been a few weeks and my thoughts have settled I'll try and elaborate my feelings a bit more. I'm also going to bump this from two stars to three. I was vacillating between them but two is probably a little harsh. 
 Specific Thoughts: 
 I continue to love Lucien, Cassian, and Nesta. These three were already my favorite characters in this series and I was happy with them in this story. Except for Lucien's disappearance for half the novel. He has more back story development and interesting character traits than most of the Night Court but gets so underutilized due to his outsider status. Annoying. 
 Mor being gay was not a surprise really, I didn't think she returned romantic feelings towards Az in ACOMAF and this was a case of people shipping anything that got thrown at them. So I am more than good with Mor being gay/bi (I feel like that was a little unclear but it seems like she is bi that prefers females). 
 What I wasn't good with is how different she was in this book. Previously she was a warm, kind, and powerful. Here she is fearful, jealous, and robbed of agency for most of the book. She is also treated really poorly by both Rhysand and Az in a scene regarding her former abusers. It sucked. It also drove home the source of some of my frustration with the patriarchy of the world building in this series. Yes the Night Court has females in power. Power that was given to them by Rhysand and which he can just as easily take away. They don't own it. Mor was said in ACOMAF to be in charge of Velaris, only to have the city potentially opened up to her abusers by Rhysand without so much as her knowledge or consent when it suited his purposes. This isn't a critique of Rhysand (who is an enjoyably grey character despite the fandoms wish to woobify him), but of the second class status of females in the world building. Sure, Feyre is High lady. Because it was handed to her. How many perfectly capable females exist in this world that get nothing but shit handed to them? 
 Feyre's opening mission to bring down the Spring Court ended up being surprisingly pointless and counter-productive. Which was a bit of surprise since it was made out to be this impending bad-ass move that ended up actually hurting their fight with Hybern. The only good thing to come out of it (and the whole reason I think it even happened) was her assisting Lucien in escape. Which the poor little Fox needed. I also think it is weird that Feyre still doesn't seem to realize that Lucien is no different from herself had no one ever dragged her out of the Spring Court, told her she was supported and cared about until she believed it, and gave her a safe haven. Lucien didn't have this kindness bestowed on him by anyone and his lack of inclusion in the abuse narrative is appalling. Feyre's belief in any supposed power he holds at Spring is a joke. 
 Many male villains and antagonists are given redemption arcs, which I don't have a huge issue with except that female villains are really slammed. Worse is how inextricably linked Amarantha and Ianthe's sexuality is to their villainy. With the exception of Hybern, male villains get to have some complexity. The females are simply Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Sluts Who Must Die. 
 I mentioned below how silly the whole bit with the Cauldron was to me, but it wasn't the only case of weirdness in the writing. I'm going to lay most of my annoyance about this on Bloomsbury, who I think are becoming very lazy indeed with the editing of these books. From statements like the "purely male gleam" in a characters eyes (huh? some languages have gendered nouns Maas but English isn't one of them) to a scene where Nesta is described as having one eye on her book and the other on Elain. LOL! I kept picturing Lurch from the Goonies! Normal healthy eyes do not go in two different directions. I get what she was trying to say, but it was said all wrong and ended up being hilarious. Shouldn't a good editor catch this sort of thing? 
 When he wasn't busy screwing over Mor, Rhysand sadly started to feel less cool and more like Feyre's doormat. She snaps at him about a comment he makes regarding Nesta that was pretty harmless and not a big deal. Sure, be a testy bitch to the guy who gave you everything. It was really unreasonable and weird. Previously I did not like the way she writes sex scenes but can't tell you what I thought here as I honest-to-god skipped over them. Hopefully for everyone else they were good. 
 I was never a Tamlin hater and hoped if she was going to make him the bad guy she would at least make him one I could take seriously. In ACOMAF he felt diminished to being kind of a douche that no one would fear. I felt he regained his power here and became an antagonist with some redemptive qualities that felt realistic as opposed to being too cheery or about-face. 
 Too many people die and come back to life at the end. Come on. I know this is a thing that authors do, but at least try and only do it once. 
 Also, Amren's scary-ness is a lot of talk. Lucien said it best when he described her as a "cranky old aunt". He's the best. 
 I felt the pacing was good and I liked most things regarding the side characters that I care about and happily I think future books will feature them more. I'm not really interested in the Lucien-Vassa storyline that I think is coming but maybe she can change my mind. As long as there are heavy focus on Lucien, Cassian, and Nesta I should probably be okay. We'll see. 
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 DAAAMN THIS BOOK WAS WEIRD. 
 I mean at one point a cauldon was running around a battlefield of it's own volition. 
 There were things I liked and things I hated. But mostly I never knew what I thought. I really liked ACOMAF and gave it four stars, but was surprised by how off this felt.