Biggest takeaway is that you should definitely have this second booked queued up when you read the first in this series. Unlike some of her later work in this world that are comprised of standalone books with character cameos, the Clocktaur books are directly related and need to be read as such.
And so we continue with our merry band of thieves/possessed former knights/misogynist scholars. As a reminder, they’ve been tasked with figuring out how to stop the armies of unstoppable Clocktaurs being built by the enemies of their hometown (I cannot remember these place names). To do so will require them to travel from point A to point B, with all the requisite troubles that will occur, and then figuring out how to accomplish a seemingly impossible task (see above re: unstoppable machines).
There’s also a love story not so much shoehorned in as drawn to an inevitable conclusion. Will our paladin get over his guilt? Will our ninja assassin with a bit of magic get out of her way and get with the paladin? You really don’t know how these things go if you don’t think the answer is yes. But that being said, there’s less plot armor than you’d think for a book of this ilk and the ramifications of those actions do reverberate in realistic ways.
I would be remiss if I failed to mention how funny this book/these books are from time to time, with truly laugh out loud lines (including any and all about the hilarious good-looking-ness of Dreaming God paladins and their single minded desire to do nothing more than slay demons).