WOW, wow, wow, this book was incredible. I've had the audiobook for this for so long but felt daunted by it being 26 hours long. It finally felt like the right time to dive in and it very quickly became a "any spare minute is spent listening" sort of book. I will admit that I got a chapter summary doc for this because there's so much going on, and I just don't always absorb details as well when I'm listening instead of eye reading, and it was very helpful. In general though, this audiobook narrator was incredible and I was able to follow along very well. 

I definitely had a feeling of "will I like this? do I like high fantasy? do I like this much court intrigue?" and the answer very quickly became YES, the characters are all so good, and the way their stories entangle was just :chefskiss:.

I also particularly loved that this was one long book. I feel like I've read a lot of books lately that suffered from a feeling of "this should have just been one edited longer book instead of a trilogy", and I really liked the author's choice to just tell this whole story all in one go. Now I just need to find the time to listen to the (equally long) prequel 😄