A pretty good book, filled with intrigue. It was almost set aside; the prologue felt very fan-fic, with a super heroic character, cut off from everything, overcoming outrageous odds and completely manipulative and dispassionate. Fortunately I stuck it out and got much more appealing characters in the next several chapters.
The book has the struggle intrigue rich books always suffer; there’s a complex set of interactions and history that the major players all know, but the reader has to get introduced to them as transparently as possible. The author does a good job of not info dumping intensely, though separating the dreams and history from the book’s current day is tricky the first time it comes up.
In the end, I liked the characters– they are all flawed, but most have extenuating (or at least explanatory) circumstances. The nebulous evil is very shadowy– we only come to certain proof at mid-book (from a minor character’s POV, and at the end (for the movers and shakers).
The book doesn’t even pretend to come to a real conclusion; it ends on a turning point, but there’s no clear break or circumstance to ground it. Despite my grousing, I do want to look up the other books in the series and see where the characters wind up. The end of the world’s a good place for drama…