** spoiler alert ** 
 Contains spoilers!!!! 
 This book and I did not get along. At all. 
 For one, the pacing was so damn slow. The whole damn book is about getting to the prison Kauf and freeing Laia's brother Darin, and that part didn't happen until the last chapters! And because of that, the whole prisonbreak felt extremely rushed. 
 What happened in the other 300+ pages, you ask? 
 Drama. That's what. 
 First of all, Elias gets poisoned by the Commandant while he and Laia try to get out of the city. The poison is uncurable, meaning Elias will die. There's no cure, no magical outcome for him to stay alive. At least that's what we're being told. This so called "Plottwist" was so transparant. I knew from the moment Elias was deadly poisoned that he was going to survive somehow. 
 While being poisoned, Elias gets zeicures, that allow him to visit the Waiting Place, a place for dead spirits to find peace and move on. Here he meets the Soul Catcher, guardian or something of the waiting place. It is quite obvious that Elias has a connection with the spirits: he isn't bothered by them, and we later learn he can even help them move on to the other side. 
 SO GUESS WHAT. Elias does die from the poison, on the freaking day he and Laia are breaking Darin out of prison, but when arriving as a ghost in the Waiting Place, asks the Soul Catcher if he can take her place, helping spirits move on. It means he'll be revived as a human, so he can finish what he started (Getting Darin out of prison). The moment Elias was told he wasn't bothered by the spirits like other humans, I just knew this was going to happen. 
 Besides this, there's also love drama: Laia loves Elias, and Elias clearly loves Laia too. But because Elias is dying, he distances himself from her, to not cause her any pain. Laia is upset by this and tries to get closer to him anyway. 
 But then Keenan shows up! And as we know from book 1, Laia and Keenan also had a thing! Insert love-triangle here. At one point, Elias leaves Laia so he can get faster to Kauf, to free Darin on his own, since he's dying and is running out of time. 
 It is during this time, that Laia decides that she wants Keenan and sleeps with him. Which was fine by me. Just choose one guy, and be happy. IDC. Just choose. I couldn't take her damn whining any longer. There was too much of "I like Elias, but he pushes me away boohoo" for me. 
 BUT THEN THIS HAPPENS: 
 It turns out, Keenan is not in fact human; he is the Nightbringer himself, disguised in human form. He needed to get close to Laia, in order to get her mother's armlet from her. The armlet is apparently a piece of the Star that a 1000 years ago locked away all the Jinn. The Nightbringer wants to free his people, and therefor needs all the Starpieces. 
 Once he gets the armlet, Keenan reveals himself and leaves. Again, this plottwist was quite easy to see. There were a lot of hints about Keenan being "dark" and stuff, so I knew something was up. Fine, I didn't exactly know he was the Nightbringer himself, but you could tell Keenan was not a goodguy. I was just waiting for it to be revealed. 
 After this, we get to the prison part. And that part I did love. So, Elias gets captured while sneaking into Kauf. He gets thrown in an interrogation cell. We meet the famous Warden. Boy did I love that character! He was so nasty and presumptious and sadistic. I loved it! He was written perfectly. Sabaa Tahir really knows how to write good villians. 
 In prison, Elias finds Darin and with the help of some slave-kids and Laia, whom is outside of prison but has a way to get inside (I'll get to that in a sec), they plan the prisonbreak. Stuff goes right, stuff goes wrong, but in the end they make it out alive. 
 Okay, now another "plottwist" you will see coming miles away! 
 Laia has magical powers. She can become invisible. You know she can become invisible quite soon; it's not hard to figure out. Except for Laia herself, of course. Like many YA-cliches, our heroine doesn't know about her magical powers, even though it's extremely obvious she has them for most of the book. And it annoyed me shitless. I mean, I get that Laia doesn't understand immediatly why on some occasions, people didn't see her. I totally get it. But why does she need most of the book to figure out she has powers? Because she needs them at the end, during the prison-break, and she basically learns to control her powers superfast! (in the book, I think it took a few weeks, or two months or someting? And that's just her trying to use her invisibilty.) At some point she sits down when she's alone and Keenan has left her, tries, and just does it! OMG! Because Keenan aka Nightbringer was totally blocking her!... I'm sorry, but I like it when characters have to train and work hard to learn to control their abilities. Now it just seems like an easy plothole for Laia to be able to get into the prison unseen. It really annoyed me. 
 (For anyone noticing, yes, the whole book annoyed me endlessly, especially Laia. I really coulnd't stand her in ATATN). 
 During my time reading this, I think I considered DNFing it almost 10 times, if not more. The only thing that pulled me through, were Helene's chapters. She's the only reason (well, her and the prison-part, tbh), that kept me from putting the book down and never looking back. 
 Helene gets her own POV in ATATN. And she's as badass as ever. Helene has become Blood Shrike (we all know a shrike is a small, fluffy bird right? I don't understand this name.. if anyone does, do explain it to me :)!), working for Marcus. 
 She is tasked with finding Elias and killing him. Naturally this leads to a lot of pain for her. She has to kill her best friend. Helene is very conflicted about this, even lets Elias escape once. Marcus at one point decides Helene needs encouragment: so if she doesn't find Elias and bring him to Marcus for execution, her family (father, mother and 2 younger sisters) will get killed instead. 
 Poor Helene! I felt so bad for her! She really was facing the worst battles in this book! 
 To skip to the end: Helene does find Elias in prison, then learns of a coup the Commandant is planning to overthrow/kill Marcus and become Empress herself, and Helene decided to run to Marcus to warn him, hoping this will prove how loyal she is, even though she doesn't bring Elias home. 
 Guess what? Marcus knew of the coup, and decides that to show his power and might, he will punish Helene for disobeying him. He kills her parents and her sister Hannah in front of Helene and a lot of mighty families in the throne room of his palace. Livia, Helene's younger sister, is spared only to marry Marcus instead. I honestly don't know what fate is worse. 
 This caused Helene to become and even harder, less emotional version of herself. And I fear for Marcus and the Commandant in their futures. I'm pretty sure her wraith will be devasting. 
 Helene was put in such a horrible position, and I felt so sorry for her for all that had happened. 
 During all of this, Avitas Harper is one of the soldiers helping her tracking down Elias. 
 We learn during the end of the book that Harper is in fact Elias's brother. Again, saw it coming. At one point near the end, Harper tells Laia that he heard Elias is not like the other Masks, that he is kind. He then tells Laia Elias seems a lot like his father -> Plottwist detected. 
 There were a lot of times that I wondered why Harper was so interested in Elias, and when the above happened, I just knew. 
 Brief summary: easy to spot plottwists, slow pacing, Laia annoyed me so much I sometimes put down the book just because her chapter was up next, and way to much lovedrama that made me roll my eyes at least once a page. 
 I'm not sure if I'll continue this series. I love the world, and I love Helene and really want to know what happens to her next, but I'm not sure if that means I'll be able to push myself through another two books... 
 I guess we'll find out, won't we?