I'm still in the minority. I stand by my thoughts in the previous installment. This series is a fair to middling one, leaning very much on the side of middling. 
 Ms. Banks has written a good novel. That's not a bad thing in itself, except that there's so many stories saturating this genre that unless a story is original or very well-told, it's unremarkable. I definitely think that this one started out stronger than its predecessor, but then also floundered for a looooooooong while in the middle, and then came a passable ending. 
 Alaric...well he was the hero of this story and a doofus too. I didn't care much for him. I mean, he was not stupid or annoying or anything. I just didn't think he had much honor. Alaric is betrothed to Rionna McDonald because the alliance is very favorable to his clan. Along the way, there's a series of unfortunate events and he falls for Keeley McDonald instead. And the story is about how Keeley and Alaric make their way. There's a scene at the end where Alaric waxes poetic about how you don't set aside the woman you love and want to marry because of political gain and how there is no honor in that. 
 But he knew that all along. So why did he spend the whole book sleeping with Keeley and still planning to go ahead and marry Rionna? It was dishonorable then. Eh. Whatever. 
 Keeley started out a strong character, and then she became as bland as all the women and other characters at the McCabe keep. I will not even go into discussing what a dumbass child Crispen is and how his death would be safer for everyone because that child is mortally idiotic like I haven't come across before. 
 I will say this though. Throughout the entire series, the only people that have had some color about them, some sort of depth (whether real or imagined by me) seem to be Rionna and Caelen, so I am very interested in reading their story. We'll see how that goes. After all, I still have a whole bunch of challenges to finish, lol. Borrow this one if you must.