I needed one year to read this, because I was so scared.

This book is too much, too dragging, too overdone, too epic and in the end it all comes too easy. It abuses the previous trilogy. But that's how it goes with series that get prolonged although they should be over.

The characters are to the mark, as always.

I cried, I screamed, I got so angry that I wanted to rip out pages and destroy the book. I needed to constantly write my friends while reading it. I had to stop several times, thinking I could not read further.
I love this series too much and I think it clouds my judgment of the book. I got way to emotional over it. On the other hand, what a book, that can do this to me
At one point I had to tell and remind myself that this is a work of fiction, literally tell myself, that this is not real and the imagination of one man.

In the end my imagination was much worse than what Pierce Brown made out of it. It kind if ends with the a heroic epic tale again.

There were a lot of things wrong with this book. The star wars references, were never as obvious as in this fourth book. Darrow, my hero, got diminished because of bad writing. He was always one for whining, but this time it reached new levels. Where was his brilliance? His perfect observation of the people around him? Now, he is just stained.
The multiple POV's where a mess. They make horrible sense. I don't think Brown could have written this book any other way, and I know they are my pet peeves. You could even read the difference in prose from the characters. But I hated every change of scene. It killed the flow of the story of one character arc. Till 50% I didn't even know why some characters where even there. No one needed Lysander. Not like this. Although I could write a whole character analysis about him, I hated to read him. He was one if the reasons it took me a year to get through the book. Ephraim was as bad in the beginning. And then Darrow gets diminished. This is all messed up.

I need to let some time pass, to see what I make out of this book. But it left its mark. One year to read a book takes something from you.