Maria

Amazingly written!

I was so excited about reading this book and even re-read the Iron Flower in preparation for it. However, I quickly became aware that this is not, as I thought, the final part of a trilogy, but rather the third book in a five-book-series (the correct term seems to be “pentalogy”, but I've never seen it used before). While I loved to be inmersed in this world again, and still have a deep appreciation for the world-building, the attention to detail in the descriptions of the characters and the anti-prejudice message, this book felt “off” to me on two levels:

1. The “love triangle”-trope that apparently is considered as essential by some YA-authors (and probably readers) has been taken to an extreme in this one. So much so, that it felt not only contrived but deeply insincere and inconsistend with the former story arc. While at first I could appreciate the cliffhanger about Ivan's death as a nice memory to when I first read a similar death scene in GRRMs ADwD, it got old really quick. It was so obvious that he wasn't actually dead, that it made even Elloren's (very few) displays of grieving him quite unbelievable. And here is my main quarrel with this storyline: the way she quickly switches onto Lucas just felt so insincere and out of character for Elloren. It would have been much nicer to see an alliance among equals who need to be fasted "for the greater good" but remain friends or comrades rather than lovers. All the kissing and especially the sex scenes were just not believable, given the background of her history with Yvan.
2. Given the time we have spent in the territory and culture of the Amaz, and them having given refuge to Sage and others previously, it was not clear why Elloren wouldn't go to them first for refuge and training. They would have been ideal in their competence of warrior training and especially the combination of different culture's fighting styles. Train there and then go East to reunite with the rest of the Resistance group and her brothers would have been (in my humble opion) been an ideal choice. Instead, there was no mention of going to them until Valasca turned up with a death warrant, that she (the leader of the Queen's guard) would apparently ignore and then sacrifice her whole life and leave her country behind to help Elloren. In addition to that, we got a large portion of the book consisting in very slow-moving plot circling around Elloren's training and overcoming of her "emotionality", only to end in her being completely helpless, calling out the (real) names of her helpers in the forest she stranded and thereby putting their entire mission in danger again. That was really frustrating to have to read through.In the end, I felt like the publisher wanted to really milk this story by making two more books than initially planned and thereby sacrificed the high level of quality and dense story-telling of the previous books (including the prequels - I'd prefer the Rebel Mages books over the Shadow Wand). And the YA-trope of the love triangle was taken to a level that felt really contrived, damaging the narrative as a whole in the process.I rarely write reviews, but I felt so many things after finishing the book that I just had to get this off my chest. I'm really hoping that "The Demon Tide" will be back on top!

A short and entertaining play!

Very interesting articles/essays. It's very academic and not an easy read. However, it has offered me great insights and lots of thinking material.