I felt like this one took me forever to finish. It felt very long and packed full of info. I wasn't sure how I would like the Riaz / Adria storyline. These are two characters that we were just introduced to within the last couple of books. I ended up liking their story well enough. I like how Nalini Singh continuously plays with the different forms / types of HEAs the characters can have. While Riaz situation was somewhat similar to Hawke's in regards to a mate, I didn't feel as though it was a complete rehash of Hawke's childhood story. Nalini Singh did manage to break the standard form for Riaz and Adria's story which I appreciated. Probably the thing(s) that I liked the most was seeing the continuation of Hawke and Sienna's story from Kiss of Snow. I liked getting a glimpse of their "after" as opposed to them getting shuffled aside for the next character(s)' stories. Nalini Singh has always been pretty good about keeping readers up-to-date with past characters. I also liked the lead-in we get to Kaleb's book (Heart of Obsidian) and Vasic's book (Shield of Winter). Nalini set things up nicely to whet the readers' appetites for these stories to get told.