Children of Virtue and Vengeance

First – I'm deducting one star for only one reason:
The phrase “word word word THIS WAR” occurs waaayyy too often. Maybe it's because I reads half of this book in one sitting, but I really didn't like that.
“We can win this war.”
“We've lost this war.”
“We can still win this war.”
I swear, all three of these occur in one chapter. Okay, maybe two of them, but it was too often. I understand why it's in the book so often, but it also just annoyed me.

This is going to seem a little off topic, but I promise it's related.

Season 3 of Buffy is one the best seasons of that show. The writing is solid, the big bad is funny and also terrifying, and the characters are finally fully realized. But it's also the season that people are annoyed by most of the characters – they're melodramatic, unsure of themselves, and there's the whole Willow and Xander smooching thing too that seems out of character for them both. But it's because they're teenagers. Teenagers are, in fact, melodramatic, unsure of themselves, and there's often a messy romantic dynamic or two to contend with.

I pretty much feel like that's the best way to describe this book. I think that there's a bigger story going on, but it's still teenagers finding themselves and being teenagers. For adult readers, this might be really annoying. I found it pretty interesting.

One question: What happened to Nailah?