This story is the third in the Merit Hunters series. I read the first two, originally titled Crowned Worthy and Stolen Crowns but I believe they have been republished with different titles; Sun of Endless Days and Storm at Dusk respectively.
I wrote about them on my blog.
https://bookphace.blogspot.com/2021/04/crowned-worthy-lg-jenkins-blog-tour.html
https://bookphace.blogspot.com/2022/01/stolen-crowns-lgjenkins.html
Both of the previous two stories ended with the most infuriating cliff hangers! I say infuriating because I just had to know what happened next! And...... it's happened again!! Another ending that leaves you hungry for more.
I would say that to fully enjoy and appreciate this book you do really need to have read the first two. I don't necessarily believe that to be a flaw. I would say the same of The Maze Runner and Hunger Games series, for example. But there is always a complexity to dystopian landscapes and regimes that begin to be established in the initial book and developed in subsequent titles. This has been done very effectively in this series.
We meet some old "friends' - Ajay and Genni for example - and some new. The dystopian landscape strikes a balance between those things we experience in our current, contemporary lives and can readily relate to and those fantasy things and beings that populate dystopia. Some of the desert creatures (Ooops, I really don't want to give too much away) derive from an oasis of imagination.
The allegorical inference did not escape me either and I fully expect further exposition in the final book in the series. As the collection develops the reader can see the moral and political implications with a greater clarity. Something that I find delightful is how this author has grown and developed her craft. In terms of the quality of the writing and plotting I would say this book is the best yet. It's an engaging story where we are invited to engage and root for characters who may not always have behaved appropriately. Emotions are conflicted and the fragility of the human nature is exposed as well as the endurance of the human spirit and the strength of belief.
I can't wait for the next book!!!!