ch 1: i honestly thought i couldn’t dislike or disrespect griffin more after his abuse in the second book, but it’s happened. why does the author keep ruining her books with her opening chapters?! griffin is constantly overbearing, overprotective, and controlling over cat throughout the entire series, and he chooses this ONE time to not be??? he’s literally just letting piers walk all over his pregnant wife when she isn’t even the one who wants or ever wanted thalyria!!! if anything, they’re taking the realms for the gods and griffin. & then griffin turning around and defending piers to cat despite him being a complete ass and hypocrite?! how’s piers gonna hate on cat for supposedly “endangering” his family and friends when he allowed kaia to attend the agon games??? i really don’t even wanna finish the book now. ch 12: also, how does cat continue to be so USELESS despite being “all-powerful,” a child of the gods and titans, and being highly trained in combat. like, im halfway through the book and she still hasn’t done anything great or powerful and is essentially relying on griffin for everything. on that same note, im so tired of the gods intervening bc she relies too heavily on them and instead of telling her how to wield her magic they just give her temporary tricks. i love the wholesomeness and banter with the gods but its all so repetitive. i know im complaining a lot, but there’s also too much romance in this book imho. i really liked the plot in the second book and felt like we were leading up to something great, but so far, its just been 200 pages of a significant amount of cat & griffin and almost none of the side characters that made the other books good (aside from the gods). & i can’t enjoy the romance because i don’t like griffin. this series had so much potential, but the execution just wasn’t well-done in my opinion. a very sad and hesitant 2.5 stars just because i ended up skimming the end of the book and really didn’t look forward to reading it and i went two and three quarters of books without seeing much power from cat. 

This series is beautiful. 
Full of hope and challenge and self growth. 
The author not only focuses in on war and the difficult decisions of it, but grief and finding yourself again in the middle of trauma. 

Excellent series.