The strength to me is the characters; and taking the country that is the enemy and making them less villianous. So for the “one note” countries bit, my take was this is how people see each other, especially in the circumstances of those books. Froi is removing that lack of nuance by a book that further explores this one country. To me, perhaps the biggers barrier for Printz and this title is it feels like half a book. No complaints, really — just that I need to know how it ends to better evaluate things like the prophecy, Froi’s role, etc.