I loved the first book in this series, An Ember in the Ashes, and finished it in one sitting. That book was fast paced, well-plotted, and gave a good sense of Sabaa Tahir's Rome-inspired world. This book picks up pretty much right where the first one left off, but it didn't have quite the same magic as the first one for me. A Torch Against the Night follows Laia and Elias as they attempt to head to Kauf, a prison where Laia's brother Darin is being held be the Empire. The alternating POVs between Laia and Elias weren't as impactful this time, since they were traveling together for most of the book. Meanwhile, the addition of POVs from Helene, who was named Blood Shrike in the first book, and is reluctantly hunting Elias, lent a bit more interest to the story. 
 One thing that turned me off about this book is that it's incredibly violent, and there are no moments of reprieve for the reader. Something terrible happens every single chapter. It felt like reading A Feast for Crows, which was the book in the A Song of Ice and Fire where there seems like there is no hope for any of the characters, except I enjoy George R.R. Martin's writing a lot more and the world building/political intrigue is much better developed. This book just seemed to focus more on violence to prove that this world was brutal but lacked any political depth to balance out the endless descriptions of women and children being killed. I guess since it is a YA book we were at least spared reading about sexual assault like in a George R.R. Martin book, but the constant violence made it hard for me to get into this story. I don't really want to immerse myself in an ultra-violent fantasy world right now; the real world is scary enough. I found myself skimming towards the second half of the book, especially over the more violent scenes. 
 The reveal at the end of the book was not very well done, either, and I don't think that the magic in the book is ever really explained fully. This book just did not have enough world building or balance to make it live up to the first one for me, and I don't plan to read the third whenever that one comes out.