I think this is going in the wrong way, getting extremely dark, taking the heroic out of heroic villain. A lot of character development is slowed as the action speeds up for some massive battles that take up most of the book. More fights, more evil, and less everything else. Not my preference =( but it’s not bad, just not for me. I hope the next volume has some more personal resolution and some consequences for [spoiler] Lucas moving on from kidnapping princesses for five minutes, to sadistically torturing people to death. Whether he thinks he’s acting or not, that’s just sickness.