I will openly admit at the beginning of this review that LKH's work hasn't enchanted me for a very, very long time now. They do have some value as snark fodder, but other than that LKH's books have been more misses than hits. I had some hope with 2008's Swallowing Darkness and 2010's Flirt, but the most recent books have reinforced that LKH has passed her prime when it comes to writing. 
 I would say that the number one culprit with LKH right now is her need to pad every scene with needless and incredibly dull descriptions, observations, and conversations. The pity is that with most of her books LKH does have a decent enough idea, but the execution is very lacking. Rather than cut directly to the chase, we have page after page of overly extended conversations and drawn out scenes. It's hard to build suspense when you have Merry and an assailant (not giving out the name) having a drawn out conversation where Merry feels the need to explain a pop culture reference to him. It's nice to see that LKH has cut down the sex scenes, but she's replaced long and boring sex scenes with long and boring conversations where everyone rehashes conversations that they'd had before... and then go over them again. I don't mind it when characters mention various plot elements from the past, but LKH talks about these issues like this is the first time any of us have ever read the "Where is my Darkness, Bring me my Darkness" speech or Merry's issues with how she was treated, yadda yadda. 
 I think that if LKH had cut out some rather ridiculous scenes (Brennan's scene could have been removed entirely) and condensed the novel into about 150-190 pages, this would have been very well improved for it. This book just gives off the impression that LKH's publishers asked for a very specific amount of pages and she decided to pad the book until she had enough pages to call it a novel. It's very disappointing, even for what I expect from her work. And I don't expect much. 
 I'm not going to tell people not to read this, but I really wish that LKH would just accept that her writing has grown very, very soft at this point. I still think that she has the potential to do better, but I think that most of her issues stem from her going without a strict editor for so very long, as most of these issues could've been solved with an efficient editing process. Or by LKH just accepting that most of her books only have about a short story or novella worth of plot and writing page length to fit the story. With every book I see more and more people grow exasperated and just walk away- something that no author wants to see.