I think my biggest disappointment with the book is the anticlimactic way in which the conspiracy is dealt with. Kai confronts Ramad about being a spy, and just outright says that the conspiracy never would have succeeded because of some offscreen actions that Kai had already taken years previously. You see Kai getting some messages while travelling, but that's it. I just don't think "well, I've already outsmarted you, so everything you've done was just a personal inconvenience and not a real threat" felt like a satisfying resolution to this plot line.

I was also half-expecting a stinger like at the end of Foundryside, where the immediate problem is solved but there's a brief glimpse of a more threatening one on the horizon. I think this is what Dahin was doing earlier, but I wanted a taste of something more concrete than just his worries to set the tone for any future book.

If anything, maybe it just feels like the endings of both past and present Kai feel like they are setting up for the future. Past Kai is ready to go unburn the world with Bashasa (and presumably do something to more Hierarchs) and present Kai is ready to go unburn the world with Ziede and Tahren (whatever that means). It hurts to leave the book on this note, wanting more but having no idea where it's going.

Ultimately, I think I was expecting more world resolution and less personal resolution and it was this expectation difference that made the various plot threads feel like "they didn't get anywhere". Sure, some Hierarchs were defeated (but only two, and what did that even mean for the Hierarchs as a whole). Sure, Tahren was rescued (but only at the end). Sure the conspiracy got solved (but the scope was to get some more power for an empire that some people didn't want to have more power, and I'm not sure I felt very invested in whether this happened or not or why it shouldn't happen). Really, this is a book about betrayal and friendship and local conflict, and the larger political and world-changing forces are in the background.