Lol, you were one of the people I was thinking of when I was talking about how if you didn't like the first book, well, it's more of the same, and honestly I'm surprised you're reading the second one! But it does get better/more relevant to your interests, I think (although I will be rather surprised if you love it like I do); I think one of the things you objected to in the first book was that it felt grimdark for the sake of grimdark, and that's not the case for this book (and makes me like the first book more in retrospect, because it's clearly a progression of not-grimdark-for-its-own-sake even if that progression is pretty slow in the first book). I'll also warn you that all the stuff I really really liked was in the last third or so, so there's a slow progression in this book too.

Oh, and I should warn you that being a Novik book, even though there are (fiiiinally) same-sex pairings they're of very minor characters (I'll put that in the post too).