What a disappointment. Felt like we were getting somewhere in the last book and then everything just gets so dumb.

Pierce notes in the afterword that the idea to bring back Roger from the dead came from the ex-boyfriend who she based the character on. Well, he should have stayed an ex and Roger should have stayed dead.

Lets enumerate a few of the really dumb things that happen.

Roger gets resurrected and everyone is like "this guy might have previously committed treason but what if we give him all his lands back and let him hang out at court."  Also, the mage who raised him (Alanna's brother) starts acting all weird but we'll just completely ignore that. Also, why was Thom dumb enough to raise him? If he really wanted to prove his power he could have raised . . . literally anyone else from the dead. Also, the crazy princess who no one wanted to marry.  Yeah, we're going to let her still hang out in the court instead of just sending her home. Maybe she can plot treason with the evil woman we decided to also let stay in court for NO GOOD REASON.

Just stultifying layers of dumb from all the characters. This reminded me so much of the last book of the Princess Will Save you series, right down to the stupid resurrection (you wonder if Pierce's novel was an inspiration there). That novel was also very bad. All of these dumb machinations basically reduce Alanna's impact on the story to basically nothing, so we get an interesting but ultimately not very meaningful sidequest and Liam gets

fridged for no real reason

which just removes any possible interesting dilemma for her at the end of the book. Just really really disappointing.