Oh man! This series! The world building, particularly on the gender issues is indeed interesting, but I wanted to throw up every time someone described Hugh as "Beautiful Hugh". It not only happens so often I feel like I'm reading a greek classic, pretty much every single POV character (Even people who know what he does to Liath! Even the scholarly nun! ) rhapsodizes about his beauty (and usually about his competency, intelligence, and how he pets the dog as well to boot) for at least a paragraph on sight of him. ......I'm not quite sure what Elliott was up to there - perhaps that abusers can be charming and good-looking as easily as anyone else - but usually when I see descriptions of that sort pop in books that often, it's a pretty good indicator that the author likes that character a lot. Couldn't one person at least find him not particularly attractive pls? Tastes do vary.

I sincerely hope that he gets pinged as the villain should, but wasn't compelled enough to keep on reading to the end.