Following the tradition of the second book, A Sacrifice of Light picks up right after the abrupt ending of the last one. We’re back with the twin identities of Sebastien/Siobhan, both disasters in their own way. It’s worth noting that she’s trying to keep her head down and not draw attention to herself.

So after tangling with an Aberrant and finally realising that she’s Grandmaster Lacer’s apprentice Sebastien’s star is definitely on the rise. Meanwhile people are leaving out offerings and praying to the Raven Queen.

The not drawing attention to herself thing is not going well.

Everything up until this point could be described as a ‘comedy of errors’ and that continues to be the case. But what might get missed under that description is how skilfully the miscommunications can occur. There’s a lot of cases where someone will say or do something that someone else misinterprets but while there’s big and dramatic examples (the Nightmares thinking that the Raven Queen is some sort of shadow and dream spirit being one) there a lot of small ones that might pass by on the first reading. At some point a teacher offers Sebastien an anti-anxiety potion, because of the aforementioned Aberrant encounter, but frames it as because of the dissection. And Sebastien never picks up on the deeper meaning. There’s a lot of these little moments scattered throughout that only become apparent on a second or third reading. It’s incredibly good writing.

The rest of the book is of equal quality. The magic and schemes are engaging, all the mistaken reputations are entertaining and the world continues to expand in a gradual but measured way. I think it’s also worth mentioning that the university classes are fascinating. They don’t necessarily have much to do with the plot, or could be used by Siobhan to improve her magic, but they’re so interesting to read. The history lessons and they way of viewing them and the discussion of spontaneous generation in the first book are my favourite but all of them are worth reading. Considering how often chapters about university classes or lore dumps are worth skipping I am very impressed with how engaging it is.

Finally we actually got a decent ending for the book! It stopped at a logical time, brought all the plot threads to a good place and left some amazing cliff-hangers for the next book. And there’s so much to look forward to! This book has raised a lot of questions about the world and about characters we thought we knew. I’m so looking forward to seeing what’ll happen next.