OH THANK GOODNESS, WE WENT BACK TO SPY STUFF. These books work SO MUCH BETTER when they're dealing with kingdom/social politics rather than yk, magic maybe evil alchemy babies. Kinda wish there was more resolution on the soul stealing plot, but it was so nice to get back into Flewelling's wheelhouse.
Loved the development around the princess royal and the queen, felt like this book picked up a bunch of earlier threads and pulled them back into the forefront. The cabal(s) were a little overly complicated/not distinguished enough, felt like she could have spent an extra 20-50 pages and expanded that a bit.