There were times this book was compelling, where I didn't want to stop reading to find out what happens next and when I found a character in a personal dilemma leading to growth. Other times, however, it felt like each character was one-note, with a single motivation driving them to the point of missing opportunities to learn from what they were experiencing. That could be due to those motivations being highly traumatic and all-consuming, but the pattern of the plot felt a little too stale of repeated human hubris / battling the same personal barrier (low self-esteem, lack of bravery, the need for retribution), failing, and then relying on a previously-hidden deeper magic to escape. The magic and world are interesting, and I hope to learn more about them in the next book, but at some point it became boring that the way the characters escaped their current life-threatening situation is through a magic that wasn't explained before that very moment.