I am so conflicted about this book. To the point of where if I had not already read the two books that came before it, I don’t think I would have finished it. And I’m really not sure if I’m going to pass it on to the two people that I had loaned those two other books to, that enjoyed those two.
I think my problem is that I came into this series in the middle. The Privilege of the Sword comes off as more of a story of manners, even though there really is a healthy dose of sexual politics mixed up in it. But because that was my introduction, and because this book is so very much about sexual politics, and really doesn’t have much of the lightness that I associate with the book before it, I really had a hard time getting into it.
I really hate who Katherine (the main protagonist from the middle book) grew up to be. And the latest Tremontaine scion, Theron, just came off as a whiny young man who really didn’t want to be the man he needed to be. I will say, his sister, Lady Jessica, was awesome, in what almost amounted to a deus ex machina ending, but even she couldn’t prevent the general WTF (in capital letters, I swear), that was constantly running through my mind in the last two chapters. I was mainly annoyed, but I am enough of a completest, I kept going to the end.