Ok so that took…a while, mostly because this is two books: The Sword of the Lictor, and the Citadel of the Autarch. I am a bit surprised at how things wrapped up—some characters that I expected to pay off in a very dramatic fashion…don’t, and some that I never expected to see again reappear. For a series that blends sci-fi and fantasy, this last volume tilted more towards sci-fi for me.
There’s a lot more looping back to things from the very first volume, but in a way that injects a lot of ambiguity and invites reinterpretation. I know that there’s subsequent series to this, but I’m more likely to reread this one instead.