Tal’s character arc was phenomenal, honestly. I would like to read approximately 400 books about Tal and Tsereg just living their sassy lives. A Tal book is all I could have ever hoped for, and not even in my wildest dreams would I have hoped for Tal Charossa as the grumpy reluctant mentor-slash-parent with the peppy sunshine child. Tal was my favourite character in the first book, and I only fell more in love with him in this book.

As much as I loved THE UNSPOKEN NAME I do think that this was my favourite in the duology.

The writing in this book is equal parts beautiful and hilarious, and I tabbed so many moments where I outright laughed out loud. I read this one slowly over a few days, savouring the story, and I already want to reread both of them back to back to pick up any hints that I’ve almost certainly missed and to tab them to hell. Not one solitary second did I even have a prediction for what would happen next, let alone an accurate prediction. There was not a single moment in this book where I knew what was going to happen next. Throughout the worlds of the Echo Maze, fragments of an undead goddess begin to awaken, and not all confrontations can be put off forever… What did I think? When a magical catastrophe befalls the city, Tal tries to run rather than face his past, but soon learns that something even worse may lurk in the future. As well as being a wizard of unimaginable power, Sethennai is Tal’s old boss and former lover, and Tal wants nothing to do with him. Meanwhile, Tal Charossa returns to Tlaanthothe to find that Sethennai has gone missing. She and Csorwe travel to a distant world to discover how to use the gauntlets safely, but when an old enemy arrives on the scene, Shuthmili finds herself torn between clinging to her humanity and embracing eldritch power. The gauntlets have made Shuthmili extraordinarily powerful, but they’re beginning to take a sinister toll on her. Two years ago, Csorwe and Shuthmili defied the wizard Belthandros Sethennai and stole his gauntlets.

The thousand eyes larkwood