This book was an absolute nightmare. One of the worst books - no, one of the worst things I've ever read. Even marking it as 'read' is a push, since I hardcore skimmed the last hundred pages. 
 It was appalling: so boring I felt like a weary, dry, ugly husk as I laboured over every indecipherable page. It was slow, painful, filled with depthless characters. But it falls into exactly the same trap as Truthwitch, which is to deliver the most bewildering world building with little to no explanation. Like, I can't believe that when I was querying I had so many agents tell me that my world building was too complicated, and then this shit is flying off the shelves, when it makes about as much sense as the gravity equation from Interstellar. And, like that gravity equation, the mystery of this book's plot and world building will take like a hundred years and a trip into a black hole to solve. 
 It was just impossible. The Scion, Seven Dials, I-4, dreamwalker thing, whatever it was, whatever, was confusing enough, but then you bung in the whole Sheol I setting with a race of creatures that... Look, I don't even know, dude. I can't make head nor tail of it. I like layered reads, and I love complex stories, and please give me more really deep and thoughtful world building, but just because I want to read a book that makes me think doesn't mean I want to come home from a night on the phones in a stuffy office and sit down to a book that makes my brain hurt. I want to come home and read something that grabs me. Something that cuts me with its hooks. This thing did cut me, but not in a good way. 
 The only character I was even marginally interested in was Warden, but even then he's the same old turgid hot immortal dude who trains a rookie heroine and falls hopelessly in love with her. He's basically Rowan from Heir of Fire or Shang from Mulan or Four from Divergent. Actually, this whole book reeked of Divergent, from the controlled building of an army to the character of Warden to the character of Nashira, who was basically Jeanine. (Did it bother anyone else that most of the evil characters had Arabic names? What was that all about?) 
 The absolute worst thing about this book was the introduction of Sheol I at all - pity, since the whole thing's set there - and the absolutely ridiculous Emim/Rephaim/Netherworld storyline. It all felt like smoke and mirrors, to be honest. It felt really silly, too, especially since every time the Netherworld was mentioned all I could think of was Minecraft, and how disjointed the whole thing seemed from the Scion in London (groan, more fucking London. Can we set UK books elsewhere please? Always bloody London, over and over again). Especially since the Rephaim thing totally negated the Scion threat. It made the Scion seem not only weak but also really stupid and pointless. And why are the Emim only concentrated around Oxford? Are they only going after the Rephaim? What is the Netherworld like? Why are the Rephaim training weak humans to combat this threat? Why did this book suddenly turn into a weird zombie/survivalist thing when it was clearly supposed to be a dystopia, then a fantasy, then a training montage, then a bunch of other things that just did not gel together? The fantasy aspect of this book was lost on me. I really did not get it. I didn't get the categories of psychics and because they were all coded so specifically with those codings never actually being explained, it was impossible to know who could do what and whether or not their abilities were even worth this whole (probably extremely expensive and certainly wasteful) charade. I didn't even fully understand what the hell Paige's power was. What the fuck is a dreamwalker? I don't understand and I don't care to, either. 
 It took me forever to start reading this book - I bought it ages and ages ago and I don't know why. I think it was in the bargain bin when I was working at Indigo, so I got it for like $3, but still. I mean, for god's sake, the hype was ridiculous. Actually ridiculous, not in the Oxford sense: it was ridiculous in that this book was clearly being marketed for the express purpose of making money, not because the story is stellar. The story just sucks. It doesn't make any bloody sense, and it's so fucking boring, too. It's just info dump after info dump and none of them actually explain anything: we spent forever learning about this dumb flux thing but the author spends no time giving a proper concrete explanation for any of the psychic categories, or the unrest in Ireland, or the actual biology of the Rephaim. We get as far as ectoplasm and "ooooOOOoooo, the aether!" and that's literally fucking it. Everything is about the aether but I'll be damned if I know what the hell it is. Reading this book was like wandering through really thick fog when you're not even sure what destination you're headed for. It was simply terrible. A total waste of my time. And I'm annoyed, because I've been flagging on my reading challenge and this book was supposed too pull me out of my slump so I could get back into full gear. Conversely, it's left me stone cold, and too exhausted to read anything else. At least, too exhausted to read anything else right now. 
 I'm not surprised that the hype train died for this. There was barely a peep around the release of the second book, The Mime Order. I guess it's hard to get excited about something that (a) flopped, and (b) your audience doesn't understand. And I'm not alone in this; I've seen plenty of people completely flummoxed by this. I'm left wondering what the point was in all of it. 
 When I started, I worried I'd be prejudiced against it, due to my growing hatred of first person, and how it closes off the story horribly. But the narration was the least of my troubles with this thing. It was okay, actually, with some decent writing and a distinctive voice. But the heroine was bland to me, making dreadful decisions, wisping this way and that, pushing and pulling in whichever way the (thin, ineffectual) plot demanded. There was nothing smooth or organic about it. It was just Paige floating around being so amazingly special, putting other people in danger, wondering why her rash and frankly crazy actions ended in punishments for others and, inexplicably, praise for herself. 
 But I can't comment any more, because I don't feel like I know her. There are a lot of complaints about third person narration and how it places a barrier between the reader and the characters, but I've read loads of third person books whose characters completely captivated me. This, on the other hand, despite being told through Paige's eyes, was cold, impersonal, and again, bewildering. Paige is a stranger to me, and not interesting enough to warrant my forcing myself to care about her. I just don't, and that's that. 
 Overall, this book was a train wreck to me. It felt totally pointless. It felt like a random collection of words arranged on some pages that may as well have been written in Coptic for how well I understood them. This author is not the next J.K. Rowling, not by any stretch of the imagination. At least J.K. Rowling's books make sense.