The story is not told in a linear fashion and it takes a while for you to get the hang of the story. But once you do, you become more interested in the different timelines and characters. Like them, you want to know more about Those and the Stronghold that can bring even the mighty Iskaria to its knees. Once the worldbuilding is mostly done and the Provost enters the scene, the plot slowly begins to unfold.

A large cast of characters is introduced at the beginning of the book, and it doesn’t stop there. You think you know them, but you only know what they want you to know. At first, you have no idea what is going on, but as you revisit the same timeline over and over again, you find out what really happened.

I was not very charmed by the writing style and the fact that many parts were told as accounts of history rather than active events. The writing style is somewhat stiff and at first I was distracted by the word order and the use of adjectives and adverbs. It reads like a medieval chronicle. I think this was done for better immersion, but it does not enhance the reading experience. 

This says nothing about how intense the meaning of the words can come across. The judgments and opinions are barely hidden in sentences like “If ordinary untruths felt to him like hollows in the smooth flow of words, now he mentally stared into the abyss” and “A cesspool of wickedness masquerading as a shrine or a virtue.”

After a hundred pages, you still don’t know much about the Stronghold or the endgame. I like that what you want to know is slowly introduced and not fully explained until the last hundred pages of the book. I wondered for a moment if the plot was added more as an afterthought, secondary to creating a parable, but I think it fits the story, I accept the plot.