Book two of this series is the expected broadening of worldbuilding and perspectives. It's not that the first book didn't follow multiple characters but they were largely all in the same situation, and this book opens up to parallel stories. From a pacing and tension perspective, this development diffuses the impact of the plot.

This is all less of a critique and more of an observation. There's only so many places a story can go like this, and this is a natural path for an ensemble cast story. That said I enjoyed it a lot, but it's also book two of a trilogy, so from a closure perspective you could sleep on this one until the final one is out.

Other assorted thoughts in no particular order:

I am a sucker for the drip feed of worldbuilding reveals about the Carryx, their war, their opponents. I always always love exploration of wrecked planet and space ship settings. I love the ongoing exploration of captivity sociology and psychology, of the variety of coping mechanisms that characters use to deal with their lives that have irrevocably changed and are much more out of their control.

I like what's going on with the swarm here. I really like its complicated relationship with Dafyd. They have reasons to hate each other, they have reasons to love each other, they are forced together because they both have the same singular secret goal. The swarm does struggle with "should I tell Dafyd these secrets that he will rightfully be angry at", but it is also a spy in enemy territory and managing the emotions of its greatest ally makes sense too. You could argue that this book is an (approximate trans? non-binary?) identity arc for the swarm as well. Despite the fact that Dafyd explicitly gives good reasons why he pushes away the Jellit swarm and is closer to Clae, the dynamics here feel quite heteronormative. Finally, and minorly, the swarm feels a bit like a plural system adjacent story too, but in other ways not.

I love Vaudai the slug's buddy comedy routine with Ghati and Campar. I love Jessyn continuing to be super competent. I laughed at the lamp shading of "we'll do horrific things to prosecute a secret war against the Carryx, but we won't force people to have children". Mostly, I love Dafyd trying to hold everything up and together even as everybody hates him for it.