This book feels 3 times as long as it needs to be, going into subplots that are almost identical to previous, and have very boring substance, with unlikable and uninteresting characters (the sheep play in particular was atrocious) if you are writing a character specifically to be annoying, then the reader is also likely going to be annoyed. There is not much noticeable growth in the characters despite the plot trying to force them to evolve. The characters often repeat similar words or phrases so it doesn’t really feel like they are individual people once you start seeing it. Every time the story cuts back to Alexion, literally the same thing happens, he gets angry, someone gets snarky, he gets angrier and thinks about punishing someone but can’t act on it, repeat. Once would have been great but by what felt like the fifth time I started skipping forward. The narrator isn’t helping, voicing the characters in the same patterns over and over again, and often reading the wrong line to another characters voice. In the first two books I didn’t notice it as much, but by the 3rd book this is starting to get very noticable because you come to learn the patterns. I’m invested in the story but I felt like this was just a diversion, with very little actual progress made on anything, and I disliked every new character added. It just starts to break the immersion when the characters are having an non stop bad time (stress, annoyance) themselves, there is no emotional break for the unpleasant mood, it skips from challenge to challenge making the story a chore. The only saving element is the AI narrative but it feels like it’s on the backseat completely and I don’t really feel like the author knew where he was going to go with it.