Previous book here. Given the ending of the first book, the entire review needs to go below the spoiler cut. But it gets four stars.
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So Mirage and Miryo have found a way to combine themselves into one woman who's a warrior and witch, and are now the woman known as Mirei. Sounds like a great solution to the doppelganger problem, eh? Sure, if you can just get the other witches at Starfall to accept that they really should be going against many years of tradition. Some of the higher-ups at Starfall declare Mirei an abomination and flee the school, and decide to go after the hidden doppelgangers currently residing at their homes or at warrior training schools. Mirei fetches as many warrior-training girls as she can and brings them to Starfall, where she finds herself needing to figure out a special school for doppelganger-and-witch-trainees all at the same time. This has its problems, especially when one doppelganger hates the idea of losing her doppelgang-ness in the first place.
Satori, the Void Prime and highest ally of Mirei, has to deal with defecting witches and feeling like she's rapidly losing everything. She also decides to send Miryo's witch-trainee friend Eikyo to be an infiltrator into the Cousins, the women who failed out of their witch test. And finally, Mirage's best guy friend Eclipse is taken prisoner by the rebel witches and forced to swear a blood oath to kill Mirei, whether he wants to or not.
Dear lord, it's a busy book, and bounces between many points of view. It could get confusing, but I managed to juggle it all, and it was interesting. There's certainly problems I didn't see coming upon reading the first book, but it's good to see how folks work together to try to figure out solutions. The ending works for the most part, and I was pleased to see how the characters developed. (Though I am still kinda wondering how a society where almost everyone has Japanese-sounding names has redheads.) So overall I enjoyed it, and it gets four stars.
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