Good lord, I hated this book so much. The plot was so poorly put together and the characters were extremely poorly written. All of the stakes felt so incredibly low that nothing felt impactful or important while going through the different trials. And the characters were so poorly written with little to no depth to them that when there was a character death it didn't feel impactful at all. 

Lyra's need to make sure everyone is safe and makes it out of each labor alive truly did not make sense to me. I don't know how I'm just supposed to believe she's so selfless and kind that she is consistently, without fail, going to put other random stranger's lives above her own? I don't understand the motivation behind this decision of Lyra's, or really any of her other decisions. I understand that there was the underlying reasoning of getting back at the gods by making sure everyone lives, but even that felt feeble and poorly constructed as a motivation. 

Each of the "friendships" that Lyra creates in the book are so flimsy and hold no weight because there's no real reason behind the friendships. The characters lack so much depth and Lyra just calls people friends with no real meaning behind the word. 

Lastly, the relationship between Hades and Lyra was so unbelievable. Again, we have this main character who is supposed to be cursed to be unlovable, and yet, all of these random people seemingly fall to their feet to have some type of relationship with her. There was absolutely no development put into what makes Lyra loveable or into why these people (Boone, Xi, Hades) would want to have friendships or romantic relationships with her. The very ending of the book may have been the only interesting element of the story.

 I had to force myself to finish this one because I wanted to choose to put it down sooo many times throughout reading. Definitely would not recommend.