The Golden Enclaves

I have thoughts... Not entirely done processing the story yet.
There's a lot of good stuff in here, but I feel like the time spent describing how magic works took the place of the fun relationships and banter that I loved from books 1 and 2.
El is dealing with a lot and we see her struggling to process it. She becomes very passive in several parts of the book, which felt like a very big turn from her usual self. Is that an effect of her trauma, or bad writing/plot development?
El's relationship with Liesel certainly changed a lot. It felt like an odd choice for El's main sidekick throughout the book. Still thinking over this character...
I really wanted to see more of El and Orion together. That was definitely missing from the story.
Mostly I feel like Novik tried to touch on some great themes, like processing trauma, but lost a lot of fun parts of books 1 and 2 that makes it worth slogging through the emotional trauma parts.
I need to read this again, when I'm not recovering from covid and fighting off migraines. I'm really curious what a reread will reveal.