What was I saying about jumping sharks in the previous volume? It's not even Great Whites anymore. We're talking Megalodon's big brother.
More things about this world happening out of seemingly nowhere. More surprise twists that feel kind of unearned. But at least the author found a way to limit the protagonist's potential to curbstomb everything for a little while?
It's a bittersweet volume for me, as a Myne-enjoyer, and the pacing is once more all over the bloody place. But I can't say that I didn't have fun. It's definitely not quality literature by any means, not at bloody all, but it's dumb fun anyway.
So far, this is my least favorite of the series. This isn't so much about Fate working his way up from crowned beast to crowned beast, but rather about his investigation of the Vlerick family and what he finds. The pacing didn't feel quite right, though that might be because I've gotten so used to Fate moving from place to place constantly and suddenly he's stuck in the capital. IDK, just didn't enjoy it as much.
Also, the thing with the Vlerick daughter because his step-sister but also the maid felt weird and confusing.
I do not recommend this volume 4. It's filled with gore, torture and perversion. As if the author thinks that with ultimate evil, one as a reader would embrace the main character and his friends because they counter it. Promoting evil deeds and antagonists just to "get a rise" of the impossible and highly improbable drama is cheap and demeaning. If Fate, as the main character would have gotten rid of the Vlericks, the Eris', the Northerns and the rest of the nobles that allow and prey upon de vulnerables/forsaken at the beginning, none of this torture, gore and despair would have ever taken place. If the royals and the nobles are the cause of evil of this capital and this imagined world, then why are the "all powerful" Myne, Fate, etc. allowing them to do as they please for thousands of years? Does the author, the editors and the publisher actually think that readers enjoy to see and read gore, torture and evil? Only a sociopath/psychopath/sadist enjoys or cares less, of other people's suffering. To write about evil, is to accept evil into our reality. There is no middle ground. The author actually created a forsaken place. Having no limits to his imagination, to create a dystopia an evil and dark world, where the good are sacrificed and the vulnerables are prey is irrational and nonsensical.