The first book of this series focused on the relationship between the two main PoV characters, Livira and Evar, and the conflict between their respective races. Eventually that became intermingled with the eternal conflict taking place within the library and things got complicated. The trend of expanding the scope of the story continues on and this book starts by introducing two new characters at an unknown point in the timeline of the characters from the first book. These new characters are Ganar, a new race that gets woven into the same eternal conflict, and one that will forever change the nature of the battle.  With even more PoV characters in this book you would expect it be just as character driven, but the opposite is actually true. Mark Lawrence instead leans into the brain-burning, timeline twisting eternal library battle and the characters take a bit more a back seat. Is this a change for the better or is this another case of an author letting the big picture story steal the show from the characters?

It's definitely the latter. While the story remains unique, the timeline bouncing makes for a complicated tale that is easy to lose your place in. Lawrence does a nice job working in some twists to the old characters that show how their lives were more intermingled than expected, but this also forces you to keep track of where each character is on their own personal timeline when they are interacting. I did enjoy the new race and it certainly added a interesting layer to the story, but this is a story that didn't need more layers, so that is a double edged sword. For me, the first book was better than the second, but there is still enough unique content here for me to pick up the finale and see where this all goes. 

Jessica Whittaker does another decent job narrating the audiobook version, with one glaring exception - she mispronounces the word "automaton" and that word is used often enough in the final third of the book to make it annoying. This alone could make reading the better option over listening.