The biggest challenge here was to come up with a new threat or mystery, and the sequel mostly succeeds, although I wish it spent more time on Minerva and less explaining the first book. I did think it was an interesting choice to have the surviving characters from the last book never be the point of view characters in this one.

I liked the Owl chapters best, followed by Ambrose. The Kodiak chapters were a bit of a chore and Yarrow didn't have a lot of personality.

This wasn't more sexually explicit than the first one, but it felt less "YA" in a way that's hard to define. One of my points on the first book was that writing it as YA felt unmotivated, and this one course-corrected a bit.

The Devon Mujaba stuff was kind of silly. It felt like kind of a bad "Hey, I recognize that" instinct when you write a sequel or prequel.

Schrefer somehow understands war and guns less than he did in the first book. I get that the warbot's place in the story is to be an implacable threat, but he didn't give it the specs or description to fit its juggernaut reputation.