Thanks so much to 47North and NetGalley for letting me read and review this wonderful book. Jeff Wheeler has been one of my favorite authors for quite a while now. I love his books so much yet this one still surprised me when I felt like part of the story was speaking to me and he got me right there crying again - I don't cry when I read stories that often, but his books seem to always get me and they're always an emotional rollercoaster ride for me.
This book is the conclusion to the Grave Kingdom trilogy and it wraps most of the story up nicely, but leaves some of it open with a hint that he might be going back to this world to write more in the future. I would love if he returned to this world and wrote more especially after how he ended this story.
In this final installment in this series about Bingmei and her story, she has to fight to fulfill a prophecy to defeat an immortal evil and save the world from the darkness that's coming. If she fails, then Echion, the dragon of night and his Queen will be in power for the next thousand years. With Echion, comes his army of dragons that they have to watch out for and avoid as she and Quion travel behind the ancient death wall where she has to find the phoenix shrine and learn the words that will allow her to learn how to harness eternal magic. She also has to ultimately join the ranks of the dead as well.
As Bingmei and Quion travel to find the Phoenix shrine, they have challenges and conflicts with figuring out the best way to get there and to do what they can and are meant to do to save the world. There's so much in this book that it's hard to know how to best explain it, there's a lot woven and put into this that all comes together from the previous two books to complete the story. It has some interesting and different parts to the story with life and death and what it really means to join the ranks of the dead and go into the Grave Kingdom. It has a lot of symbolism and things that have had me thinking and lost in thought over this for a little while now.
Toward the end of this story is where there's the most emotional and heart-wrenching parts and I can't say much of anything for fear of giving things away. It really needs to be on your list, go pre-order it, get ready and read it for yourself! ( )

Overall, I loved this series; The Grave Kingdom is my favorite of Jeff Wheeler's stories. That said, I did not love this third book. I felt confused through first third of the book; I had trouble following what was happening; it didn't make sense to me. After that, it took awhile to clarify my confusion and the story flowed much like the rest of the author's writing, and it was not as compelling for me as the first two books in this series.
— Rebecca ( )