"If any beast were an exception to the laws of space or time, it would be cats" Agnes tells us, although there isn't actually anything mystical about about the homeless cats she cares for despite the latest rumors. Sadly Agnes is surrounded by unenlightened barbarians who perceive cats as vermin so she's having no luck finding a new store front for the shelter after the current one is badly damaged in a magical duel. The only place willing to rent to her must be haunted or something because the last two tenants both left suddenly and without saying anything to anyone. It's not long before she suspects that someone is running an illegal artifact business out of her basement, but it never occurs to her that her mysterious landlord is Havelock himself, the mage who created a spell intended to destroy the world.

After the unbelievable cliffhanger of the prior book, we finally get to experience the final battles of the Uncrowned King tournament. Obviously Yerin and Lindon will now be taking different paths to their progression, but a lot of meaningful battles remain. Battles that will not only dictate the outcome of the tournament, but also impact the impending war. To spice things up even more, the Abidan have added an additional prize for the tournament winner, the legendary artifact known as Penance. Penance is an ancient weapon of pure destruction capable of instantly killing any one person, and since it will go the tournament winner, so both sides of the war now know they are at risk of losing one of their leaders. This makes all of the Monarchs feel a little more vulnerable than usual, and thus they all now care much more about the outcome of the tournament. So does this book make up for the unfinished feeling of the last book?

Beast Business is a novella taking place some years after the original Hidden Legacy trilogy about the illusion Prime Augustine Montgomery and animal Prime Diana Harrison. While Augustine had a recurring role in those books we learned almost nothing about his power or private life and what little we learned of Diana came from the perspective of her brother, so I was looking forward to learning more about her abilities. The cub of Diana's strange tiger-like animal summoned from the Arcane realm has been stolen and she needs the help of an investigator like Augustine to find it before it dies. The companion short story with the cringe worthy title "Arabella saves the day" covers the same day from Arabella's PoV as she works on a different case.

The Uncrowned King tournament is a prestigious gathering of sacred artists unlike any other. All of the Monarchs of the most powerful families attend in person, each fielding teams of their strongest young Underlords. The tournament itself spans several months and has a multiple round structure, with each round presenting a different challenge designed to whittle down the playing field. All four of Cradle's main characters have qualified as competitors in the tournament, but not all of them are representing the same team, which means that they could wind up fighting against each other at some point. Eventually, the top eight competitors will earn the title of Uncrowned, and with it receive personalized training from a Sage before the next round. The final four each receive gifts from the other families and promise of future ascension to Sage and beyond. Because this tournament takes place in the shadow of a looming war, the stakes are higher than ever, and both sides plan to push the rules to their limits.

A talented Artificer who helped Peter the Great solidify his empire and then gave his life in a final stand against an arcane enemy finds their soul in the body of a young Russian noble three hundred years later. The good news is it seems that the reincarnating aspect of his last Artifact worked and even made him a Universalist able to channel all types of magic energy, the bad news is his new identity, Aleksander, is a well known party boy who bankrupted his family. His first challenge is to save his new grandfather from debtors prison. The obvious solution is to craft an amazing Artifact and sell it, but with his reputation it's going to a be hard to convince anyone to hire him. Throw in a death-mage for hire, scheming nobles, plots against the Czar, and hints that their old enemy is back and you have an entertaining yet somewhat cozy fantasy with rare elements of LitRPG progression. I say somewhat cozy because Aleksander has a tendency to deal with his enemies in creatively violent ways without a qualm thanks to his battlefield experience in his past life.

"The needs of the many will always be loud. But in the end, it is only the strength of the few that matters." By the end of the first book, Vis was a character I cared about and I wanted to better understand what the impact would be of his successful run of The Labyrinth. The impact to him as a person, to those characters around him that I grew to care about, and to the Hierarchy itself. And while The Strength of the Few does provide those answers, that is only one third of what it provides, because now the story is split across 3 PoV characters. Even though I should care about all 3 the same, I just didn't, and that was also true for the worlds they each inhabited. So did Islington's ambitious plan to triple the scope of his story work out, or is this yet another example of an author not telling his readers the story we were hoping for?

The award winning novella Every Heart a Doorway introduced us to the School for Wayward Children which only accepts children who are apparently convinced that they not only belong in another world but that they have been there and if they can only find their Door again they can go back to their true home. The parents believe the boarding school will straighten out their children while the real goal of the school is to help them cope with being stuck in our reality after going on quests, saving worlds, and even falling in love. Some went to worlds made of candy and some to solemn underworlds so only their shared loss and constant hope their Doors will return binds them together.

The exact method to transition from Truegold to Underlord can be a bit of a mystery for some sacred artists, and many are never able to cross that line. It requires you to know yourself, and your motivation for following the sacred arts. Once that personal insight is achieved then the sacred artist must reach outward to the vital aura all around them, become infused with soulfire, and be reborn as an Underlord. It is certainly a coveted rank and desired by all Truegold sacred artists, including Lindon, but for Yerin, this step in her progression has literally become a matter of life and death. After sustaining irreparable damage to her lifeline in a battle, Yerin's life has been shortened to the point where her death is imminent, unless she manages to be reborn during the transformation to Underlord before her lifeline runs out. No pressure.

When last we saw Zac he was still working on his upgrade to Late Hegemony as he and the others with access were whisked away for the trial event at the Left Imperial Palace. Zac gained his first seal for the event several years ago so the history and competition of the event has been building for several books. This is only the fifth such event to occur over hundreds of millions of years with the grand prize authority over one of the nine peaks of the Dao. Although Zac has maintained that he intends to leave the grand prize to others willing to die for it, we all expect him to get pulled into the thick of it since the fate of Earth's sector of space hangs in the balance. Not to mention he always ends up at the center of events so it was with great anticipation I started reading.

Long ago, the Monarch Northstrider created a world of his own. This pocket world, Ghostwater, is where he kept some of his most valuable items; however, that pocket world is now dying. The stability of that world was damaged in the events of the last book, and the Skysworn are determined to retrieve some of the valuables before they are gone. It is not clear how long that world has left, but Lindon, Yerin, and Mercy are all part of the team sent to retrieve those items. It doesn't take long for them to become separated, leaving Yerin and Mercy stuck outside, with Lindon trapped on his own inside the dying world. So is this a worthy story or is it just a contrived way to split off Lindon and send him on a side quest that allows him to catch up in power to Yerin?