This sequel to Magonia did in fact do what I had hoped and expanded on the original plot of the first book, HOWEVER... 
 It was so messy and there were so many holes and things left completely open-ended that it was frankly pretty frustrating. 
 Despite being a gorgeously-worded story in a beautifully rendered setting, there's so much that is left out or rushed through, and the back and forth from Aza to Jason's perspectives was just not clean like it was in the last book. We were getting both of their perspectives on things that they're both seeing happen concurrently A LOT and it just served to slow down scenes that should've been full of action, with too much inner monologue and crap. 
 Scenes that should've made your heart race, end up getting slowed down by the perspective change, and scenes that should've been taken slowly to build up the rollercoaster of emotion were rushed through. Characters that hardly served any purpose at all were killed and I didn't care because they weren't important anyway, but you could tell the author wanted you to believe they were important and then just failed to get that point across. It was honestly just really frustrating. 
 I loved that we finally got a resolution to everything and we got to see more Magonia and a much bigger-scale of plot, but then it was all a let-down. The potential was THERE and it could've EASILY been reached fully if the author had edited out some of Jason's internal wishy-washyness (we get it he feels guilty and doesn't think Aza will love him anymore, you don't have to keep telling us literally a thousand times, use that space for plot development and drawing the reader into the world). We were already in Jason and Aza's heads plenty, I wanted to be in Magonia, and in the plot, not inside their angsty teenage romance that you know is going to play out a certain way because it's obvious literally the whole time. We know what's going to happen with them. Tell me everything else. 
 And then the ending was hella rushed and Dai's character development was basically non-existent and then all of the sudden oh look there he is we're all here la dee da. The best secondary character was Aza's sister Eli. She was the only one with an ounce of dimension and even that was barely there. 
 If you've already read the first book, go ahead with this one but don't expect much after the first like 8-10 chapters.