Coming off the previous book in this series this felt more like it was trying to reel in the world building back to less complex formats.
Thank goodness too because the prior book was all over the place, doing way too much and felt hard to focus in on anything because of how overly complicated the world was.
This goes back back to that familiar format of feeling more focused in on one dungeon themed environment.
It oh most felt a little too simple though, the world building felt kinda boring. I had a difficult time enjoying anything it was doing because it felt so simple like the first dungeon and didn’t really utilize the unique perk of the dungeon at all. This dungeon how a sorta city management type perk but it felt super bare bones and not really used too much, also any of the NPCs just didn’t feel particularly interesting. This was definitely a slow build up plot focused book though which makes up for the lack of an interesting dungeon world.
Even with how boring the dungeon itself was though, the plot is what kept me going. It was painfully slow but felt necessary. There was a lot of moving parts to set the stage for the ending. It needed a lot of time, to put these pieces and people in place for what was to come.
I was probably only mildly entertained for like 70% and completly taken away with enjoyment by the last 30% of the book. That ending was just amazing.
It was very satisfying to see so many pieces slide into place or feel the impact of the prior 4 books all feeling like they contributed in someway to this ending. The author did a really good job making this series feel like every book mattered. Small details from the previous book that you maybe would have otherwise forgotten about ending up mattering or finally get tied in at the end here.
I also absolutely love the characters here, everyone just feels like so much work is being put into building up their relationships and always feeling a sense of progression and build up of their personality. They really feel like living, breathing people thanks to how good the writing is.
The action scenes are also really phenomenal. The descriptive writing really makes this feel like a movie going on in your mind.
Overall I had a lot of fun with this book. Some minor gripes with the slow pacing, maybe that could have been a bit more interesting to break it up but still ended up being stellar thanks to such a incredible later half of the book.