I am emotionally wrecked and devastated and I will never stop trying to get everyone I know to read this series. ( )

3.5

I’m sad to say that this book was a bit of a letdown for me, both as my first fantasy read of 2022, and as the final volume of a series I really liked. I won’t say it was bad, because I still enjoyed it (and let’s face it, some things just couldn’t have been resolved any other way between these two). but I will say that I expected more.

First of all, the writing felt rushed when compared to the other three books. I am as impatient as anyone when waiting for a new release by one of my go-to authors, more so when it’s a final volume of a series, but I would’ve happily waited a month (or even longer) for a better version of this book. The release date didn’t have to be pushed forward — it would’ve been best if Kingsley used that time to go through her final draft with a fine toothed comb a couple more times.

My other niggles:

➣ Anfar deserved some TLC after all the shit he’d been through, and I can’t say I’m 100% satisfied with how his story with P unfolded here. It was too insta for me, the connection that I’ve seen slowly building in book 2 was smothered in the next two books — but mostly in this one — and I saw almost no chemistry between them here

➣ Abigail had been shy and nervous in the beginning, and I totally bought that, I even thought it was adorable sometimes! Here, it seemed like she was utterly incapable of making rational decisions, she was meek and unassertive, submissive (but not in a good way), and some of her Mary Sue characteristics came to the fore (that started in book 3, I think). Won’t go into specifics because spoilers, but I cringed several times

➣ Valroy. I liked him better in the first three books… He was extra mean and assholish here (he’d always been an asshole, but it reached epic proportions in this volume), and it exceeded even my limits. Some of the things he did… I don’t want to call it abuse, because the consent was there, but some of the scenes were pretty hard to read. The way he was willing to do anything in order to achieve his ‘goal,’ even that, that last thing, was an unpleasant surprise

➣ …but in the end the main conflict (spanning four books) was resolved in one /- four-page scene?? ( )