I read the second half of the book yesterday, and now that I’m getting closer to being caught up I figure I may as well take the time to actually post something.
Like (I think)a few other people mentioned, I found the negotiations at the beginning and the dialectal stuff more difficult than the rest of the book and most of the series so far. The part at the start of the book just because there was more vocab I didn’t know than usual and the dialectal stuff because… well, it’s different from the “normal” Japanese I’ve read a lot of 
As for the actual contents, I liked most parts: Subaru actually getting through the negotiations successfully was really cool after his huge failure the last time, and while it was pretty long the fight against the white whale was cool enough, and while I usually don’t like flashbacks Wilhelm’s chapter was also pretty interesting(I think it was just short enough that I didn’t mind it too much, since it was like… only 20-ish pages?).
The only parts that felt a bit “slower”(or maybe “less interesting” would be more appropriate, but that also usually leads to slower reading) were the parts right before and a bit after the fight, but the part with “ユーリ” right at the end was also nice, so… since I think I’ve mentioned almost every part of the book as something I liked, I guess the conclusion I should draw is that it was a good book 
