I have to say this started out sort of two-star-y, with what felt again like too much exposition of a magic system that doesn’t really make sense and stakes that seem hard to place.
Side bar, the magic continues to not make sense to me, as it does not follow Sanderson’s Second Law of limitations being more important than powers–night magic and light weave can just be created into anything, a la the Green Lantern(?), as long as you are sufficiently concentrated and have worked on your endurance. But that means it’s slightly unclear what can (shields, rappelling hooks, healing I believe) and can’t (??) be done with this power. And why the lightweavers were exterminated? But not random night magic-ers, who conceivably can do as much damage? Maybe this was explained somewhere, but again there’s too much going on.
But then…it got better! I think there was a lot of extraneous bits removed, and the pace slowed down enough for me to start caring a bit about what the various characters were up to. There was a lot of plot about the use of gems to power up warships (??) that seemed to entirely go away. Dragons were used more judiciously, and with some build up, so that later plot points were easier to understand. There was a ‘big bad’ (the forthcoming Void, sort of like a wave of necrotic miasma that ruins everything it touches) that was detailed and telegraphed in a way that gave the conflict some stakes. Plus, our two MCs had a better rationale for the back and forth they were going through–still enemies, also lovers, but genuinely conflicted for reasons that made sense. Well neigh unsolvable, still, but makes sense.
Another sidebar, I still don’t understand what the point of Severs are
Back to the book: I actually really liked the conclusion of the Void plotline and almost felt like there was more juice to it and that it could have sustained a longer series of books. But now that it’s done, I’m a bit confused as to what I’m going to have to care about in the next (last?) installment of this trilogy. I know vaguely how it’ll end, having read the story it’s based on (and, you know, in possession of at least three brain cells that seem missing from time to time in our MCs). But I didn’t think I’d pick up the next book at the start, and now I’m more keen to do so!