Well, that was not my favorite wrap-up. I mean, it was pretty original, for sure. But I have some serious hesitations. First, the flashback stuff - it was like a weird look back onto colonial America, which has never been my favorite part of history. But with some clear a differences - namely the magic part. And it just never meshed (the technology and magic) in a way that worked for me. To be fair, I've never found a tech/magic mesh that's worked for me, but I hold out hope. And really, we all know that stories of utopias never work, because people are inherently flawed. That's why the dystopia genre exists in the way it does. And there are, of course, many real life examples as well. In any case, a strong leader (William Tear) can always make something happen, get something started, but in the end, there's no way to avoid the special quality of leaders, the respect they get, and then the following resentment. And then decisions are made along the way that make things worse in an attempt to be or do better (the path to hell is paved with good intentions) - like ignoring a less favored son. And then we get people like Row. And there will always be followers like Gavin. And then look at what we get. Anyways, if that's all it was, it'd be fine, cause that's how you get dystopia. But I definitely had some other problems - that magic was so weirdly used and described. The sapphires never really made sense, their origin never really explained. So much was unknown. And for Row - what the heck was his plan? Like really, deadened child super soldiers? I just really don't understand the thought process. Or how the crown was more special than a normal crown - I mean I get that Row made it to change the past, and that's what Kelsea used it to do, but how? How did he learn that? And what the heck "curse" did Katie put on him? And how did Kelsea's "forgiveness" break him out? What was the Red Queen's connection with him and where did her power come from? It was all just too vague. And while I appreciated that the author did her best to make things in shades of grey, no black and white (like Row had some good points, before he took it too far, and William Tear was not all the infallible character people saw him as), the internal dialogue of the main characters (Kelsea, Katie) over that just seemed less than genuine. And the judgement from everyone around her was black and white about it. It was just an odd environment, not the best exploration of morality, I thought. And I liked the general idea of the ending, what the author tried to do, but wow it just seemed super anticlimactic and sudden. Relatedly, what the heck was with the end of the Red Queen - she gave up so easy, so fast, turned herself around seemingly overnight, and then some strange change was coming over her and she lost control and we have no idea what happened in her past or what was happening in the present? And we never really learn anything about Arlin and Brenna, which would have been a nice loose end tied up. But anyways, Johansen created an entire fantasy world, wrote it into a saga, and then BOOM - it was all gone, disbanded, the characters scattered and not recognizable to each other. And thrust into a world that, while better hopefully, looks eerily similar to normal life, to the real world (which, just on a personal level, is not why I read fantasy). And it happened in like 5 pages. And we're supposed to expect that Kelsea will just adjust to having no purpose and no friends? Because I sure didn't and it's not even like it was my life. Just...that's rough. It's bold though. I mean, I respect the chance she took and the out of the box thinking. And the fact that she took the main heroine at her word - that she would sacrifice whatever to save her people and make a better world - props for that as well. I've never seen it taken to this extreme before. And I respect that. But overall, this just seemed to have a lot of holes for me, some undeveloped thought/plot lines, and it just didn't find what it was reaching for, in my opinion.