but a rather depressing form of it. I found myself really jaded about it to be honest, and not caring very much. The break between Toc and Tool could have been poignant, but I found Tool's change so stupid that it left me a bit cold.

You're definitely right about the theme of evil cultures. Although as far as the K'Chain Che'Malle go, it's a bit ironic that right after it has been established the KCCM might be good after all (then again, most of the KCCM we'd seen in earlier books were undead, so it's not like the live ones had really been depicted as evil before, other than fighting that war against the Tiste Andii-Tiste Edur alliance in the prologue to Midnight Tides, but even there they are merely defending themselves), we get the attack of the evil K'Chain Nah'ruk. Kind of feels like the enemy has only shifted after all. Sure, there's a few remarks about how they'd been cruelly oppressed for so long and have some justification for their belligerence, but those felt like half-hearted excuses.

In the same vein, I found it interesting, but rather odd to say the least, how the Bolkando kingdom went from monstrously evil to mostly good. In the early scenes involving the Chancellor and "Conquestor", it's at least strongly suggested that Queen Abrastal and her daughters are manipulative and cruel like the Chancellor and Conquestor themselves. Then as soon as Abrastal and Felast show up themselves, they're shown to be mostly good. Bizarre.