This book is meandering, dithering, dawdling, dallying, dilly-dallying, faffing, fiddling, floundering, flapping, flustering, fidgeting, fumbling, and generally ambling about in that grand parade of perpetual nattering about nothing in particular occasionally, almost accidentally, nudging the plot forward as if by clerical error.
While the intermittent rambling internal monologues added something to the first book. This entire book feels like it's trapped in these internal debates about skills, politics, whatever even combat is marred by almost chapters worth of internal dialogue between attacks.
Arlo doing napkin 4d math early was the least interesting thing I've read in a long time, that whole initial puzzle was a slogggg. It's an incredibly difficult read this time around.
Also most the book is jumping from evolution and spell descriptions to the next evolution and spell description. Might be interesting for some I guess.
This is a tough read. Honestly at best most of the chapters were skimmed. If this is indicative of where the series is heading I'm jumping off here.