The Basics 
 3.5 stars 
 This had the potential to be really engaging, but the fast pace and flashbacks confused me. Some of the characters seemed more like plot devices than people. 
 Trope Check 
 *Anti-magic religious group 
 *random plot twists at the end 
 *team of misfits thingy 
 *hate-to-love romance 
 *cocky anti-hero type 
 *impossible heist 
 *confusingly fast-paced action 
 The Names 
 Okay, I used to be a huge Grisha fangirl, but the magic is lost now that I take another look at the names, which are a bunch of English words with -ki stuck on the end and that's just not a thing I like. Also, the gang's name is the DREGS which is like the stuff on the bottom of coffee cups that Alina and Mal pretend to tell fortunes from in Siege and Storm. I get they're pulling the whole misfit trope, but honestly, it doesn't sound very threatening, y'know. And when a character refers to their guns as "my babies" it seems kind of ridiculous. 
 Full Rant/Rave/whatever 
 The beginning of this wasn't all too good. The faux-gang-language was grating and I felt that Bardugo didn't really take the gangs concept seriously, but maybe that's just because our gang happens to be named "The Dregs" (see above). Nevertheless, after a few chapters, it began to shape up. Kaz kind of started out as a less developed Nikolai 2.0 (as if Bardugo just made a shallow but arrogant and snarky character because it was easier and readers would like him) but his backstory gradually fell into place. However, the backstories also annoyed me because at a certain point, the line between the present and the backstories blurred. The action was also confusing and I felt that there were unnecessary injuries in the making of the events near the end. The (view spoiler)[Bo Yul-Bayur being dead (hide spoiler)] worked, but the (view spoiler)[Wylan being unable to read (hide spoiler)] made no sense whatsoever. 
 There isn't a whole lot of super atmospheric feels-y writing in here, but there are the occasional good insights. I was also surprised by Nina and Matthias, from which I expected a cliched hate-to-love trope, but their story turned out to actually be somewhat well-done, save this line. 
 "I'm very keen on cake. I'm wondering if we can find some common ground" 
 I'm not doing any shipping or fan art, but this was decent. Nevertheless, I need something more to divert me from this constant stream of not-quite-4/5-star stuff that I've gotten lately. There was a couple passages of good insight but overall, this book was too confusing with too many plot twists and thus fell a bit flat.