Reviews

A great end to the series though it does seem somewhat like it's nearly all battle scenes with brilliant bits of character work in between. And I LOVED the epilogue!! It was a bit too much exposition but what happened and what it will lead to for the future of this world overall was great. Wonderful novel in a fantastic series that any fantasy fan should read!!

mastersal's review against another edition

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3.0

Yay - I finished the series … however, this book may be my least favourite of the series.

I had a bit of a stop and start with this book, I had to read the first 30-40 pages twice because I was a bit disengaged in the book. This could be just general fatigue which has plagued me in November - I want to put that upfront as I do think my reading enjoyment with the book was erratic.

This book spent a lot of time with characters like the Vord Queen who I didn’t really care about and

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Alera, the evil Duchess who just refuses to die etc. . Kitai was basically comic relief and was pretty superfluous to the plot. I don't recall Max appearing much on page etc etc.

. These absences impacted the character dynamics and left the Tavi sections feeling a bit rote. There wasn’t enough focus on the politics (

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in favour of the Vord - I can just imagine this book being Tavi returning to deal with the Senate and cowing them. Unfortunately this doesn’t happen

) or enough character moments which stick out to me in comparison to the rest of the series.

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Despite all the happy endings which made this such a comforting read for me

, the end was a bit of a mess.

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Tavi didn’t really get to relieve the siege and the battle was too fragmented. After the landing of the ships and bringing down the gates he didn’t do much which was interesting or fun. The book was more about the queen and her growth, but we didn’t spend enough time with her to really get much pathos.

I found this book overlong with some needed confrontations and reunions missing which made this very book muted emotionally. It was basically a really long battle without stakes. I think the split of the plot into book 5 and book 6 wasn’t needed. The Vord as villains were not flushed enough to make this an epic conclusion. Merging this with the Canim plot beats from book 5 would have kept my interest more

3 stars because despite all my griping I did have fun overall and the middle part of the book was actually quite a lot of fun.

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Oct 2021
Putting back on my TBR as I will have to restart the book as I have been distracted by a bunch of other books. Read up to approximately up till page 30

dinapetko's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

seadeepy's review against another edition

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3.25

A satisfying but remarkably predictable ending. And I really wanted some sort of closure between Amara and Fidelias, since that's the story that started the whole series.

Hmm. Might have to write a fic about it.

emoticonnie's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.75

wok's review against another edition

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adventurous fast-paced

3.75

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