So, I liked this book for the most part, BUT 
 It is not a sequel that you can pick up months and months after you've read the first book and still have a good grasp of what's going on. I don't know if it was the book, or me, or if the characters and events just weren't focused on enough in the first book, but wow was I lost! I did read the first book and enjoyed it, but that was several months ago and there have been many books in between. Characters showed up that I had no recollection of. Events were alluded to but not summarized, and hell if I knew what they were talking about. I'm sure certain events would have had much more impact if I could, say, remember who the hell Lessa was and what she did or how she acted in the first book, or under what circumstances Cecile escaped the mountain at the end of Stolen Songbird. It's not like I totally blanked out on the entire first book. I thought I remembered most of the important things (glass garden! Sluags! Anais getting skewered!) but apparently not. So while I did enjoy the book, a lot of the impact was lost on me. 
 Another thing that drove me crazy was how characters "just knew" things. A mystery would be solved, a character's motives or intentions would be discovered, etc, because a character suddenly just knew it. I'm not exaggerating. And it happened on more than one occasion. And not just simple things. For example, Character A figured something out, then somehow "just knew" that Character B knew it, and also "just knew" that Character B knew that Character A knew that Character B knew. (Wow yeah I know. Confused yet?) And despite all that, they still couldn't figure out Anushka's identity or the secret to her immortality....which was glaringly obvious throughout most of the book. Argh. 
 So, although I wished I had remembered the first book's contents enough to appreciate this one more, I did still enjoy it. The end of the book throws an entire new perspective on the entire world in which the books take place, and open the third book up to going in countless directions. I can't wait to see where the author will go with that. I just hope that when the time comes, I still remember this book well enough to appreciate the next one!