Oh man, this series is not making it easy for me. During the first couple of hours of this audiobook I caught myself thinking multiple times that I should just dnf the book / drop the whole series. 

I actually cringed the most at the chapters titled “Sex talk” even though those didn’t turn out as bad as I thought. But the biggest problem is just the frankly quite terrible attempts at slice of life that the series keeps trying to pull off which most of the time just feel very uninspired and boring. And that comes from someone that went through literally millions of words of slice of life during The Wandering Inn which most of the time I adored. 

Doesn’t help its case either that there hasn’t been a single side character in about 3 books now that I actually liked. Aside from the animal companions, obviously, they don’t have to try as hard.

In stark contrast to all that comes the second half of the book which I just thoroughly enjoyed and had a great time with. 

The series does best when the tension is the highest and yeah it is at this point in the series where we already have this crazily power creeped up MC but it is always just an insane delight to see which ridiculous stunt Elaine is able to pull off next. Plus we also got some fairly compelling villainous characters in this one that work very well in contrast with Elaine's healing powers. 

So even though I pretty much hated much of the early parts of this book, I still give it 3 stars because I appreciated the direction it took and also the ending and prospect of the next book to see some beloved characters from the earlier entries in the series again also give hope that the series could be on the upswing again. If I’m wrong and the next book is gonna be a disappointment, I think that’s gonna be it.