The City of Brass

I really enjoyed the early part of this book -- there's some really interesting worldbuilding in it -- but I ended up feeling as though the book was "pantsed" rather than plotted, and a lot of things were just thrown in without necessarily any planning or purpose.

The ending really disappointed me. I don't see a rational reason for [things that happen near the end]. It seems like a plot point which was contrived to set up the big fight scene which is all kinds of ridiculous on its own. By the end of this section, I was just rolling my eyes. It seems a lot more like a deus ex machina than a surprise plot twist to me. And the love triangle/jealousy subplot was just incredibly annoying to me.

I feel as though the characters have turned into caricatures, and I don't find them interesting enough to keep reading the rest of the books in the series -- which is a disappointment, given how much I liked the book at the beginning.