Leo was really fucking stupid and annoyingly so the entire time. Savine was a backstabbing power hungry bitch the entire time. Even after she got scared shitless in the riots and again after she had a kid. Stour was an overly annoying character. Rikke felt like a Mary Sue character, everything going her way and everyone liking her. A lot of main characters were so one dimensional. Judge, some crazy lady people listened to for some unknown reason just killing people for no reason in her court over and over and over. Broad also never changed and was very one trick pony, same with Jonas. Orso and Vick were the only two that really grew much as characters, and I liked reading their stuff, even though it ended shittily for one of them. Isern and Shivers were enjoyable too.
The overarching story I just didn’t care for. I don’t like the modernizing portion of it. Reading about kids in factories and maximizing profits and new inventions, bleh. Give me northmen. I also hated how he was bringing modern politics so blatantly into the story. Leo being hyper racist against brown people and super homophobic because he’s secretly gay. Lord Isher (I think it was him) yelling ‘Make the Union Great Again’ was stupid
Bayaz being completely absent while his Union he has held together for so long spirals out of control was pretty out of character. Allowing it to collapse under debt he was creating also didn’t make sense. Rikke’s trickery later in the story was way too obvious, as was the identity of the Weaver.
Finally, I didn’t like how it ended on such a massive cliffhanger. I would have rather he just ended the story and the next arc just happened but whatever. I didn’t care for this trilogy enough that I may not read the next, which is a shame because his first six books I really love. I’ll probably just give them a chance with low expectations and hope I’m surprised. I still like how he writes, I just didn’t like this story arc or most of the new characters.