Goood, this was draggy. This was not my cup of tea, and it breaks my heart to say this. Maybe I, as a person changed too much to enjoy Carey's books. Yes, the writing was beautiful. Yes, the story had some good points. But I never cared for the characters and it was horribly draggy. The last third was the only worthy part of the story, but by then I have already been fed up.

You know what would have made this book good? Multiple POV's, than maybe I would have cared about the characters. But 30% of introducing one character and follow them through their training? Wasted time! Another 30% following through badly orchestrated court intrigues (and I will totally call them badly because I KNOW Carey can do much better) and a princess character that was described as a Lion but acted like a sad rabbit? Yes, nice, we had a character with a handicap, we had a trans boy/genderfluid person but Carey didn't do anything with it? And I am not sure if real genderfluid and trans people might rip it apart, since Carey made it so that they developed because of society not and were not born like that.

Anyway multiple POV's would have changed everything, some training sequences, some scenes at the court, but also some scenes from a thief who is bad at thiefing and gets caught, or a seeker who is seeing the first sings of the rise of the end of the world and tries to assemble the heroes to stop it.
It does sound awesome, doesn't it? It sound a little like six of crows.

What you get however is basically the Long way to a small, angry planet.... With 60% of the book telling the prestory and introduction.
I always had the feeling it was a feel good novel. Nothing really bad happened. At least nothing that would hurt the characters you might have liked. And with that the end of the world gets rather boring.

So not my book and a lot of hours wasted. But if you liked The long way to a small, angry Planet and you like fantasy. Try it