Unfortunately this did not live up to my expectations or caliber of the first book. 

My main gripe with the first book was that the lore behind the gods wasn’t explained basically at all, but I was able to forgive that a bit because it was more focused on the romance. But because of the lack of worldbuilding in book one, there was a lot of catch up to on in this book in building a foundation to stand on for this war and the sides. And despite this, the beginning of this book is sooo slow. I think there was far too much time spent on everything that happens in the first probably half of the book that could have been condensed down. At 85% in we were still getting new lore which is just not the time to be introducing new things. Ultimately I didn't think the villain was all that scary, I did not even truly understand WHY the war was even happening besides: gods on opposing sides. All the issues and obstacles were very easily solved, nothing felt earned. I truly didn't even really understand the WHY of certain outcomes in the book.

On top of all that I dislike the “two MC/lovers are separated” trope and while it makes some sense here, it also felt like that was the only way to build romantic tension again.