damn. i can’t believe ive finished this series. 

um i feel like this was easily the weakest book in the series. i still had a good time but everything was Meh. 

the plot itself was boring as hell. at least in the other books it felt like the characters were consistently working towards their goals, even if they were having tea or going for a walk or something. in this book, idk it felt like most of the time wendell and emily were pissfarting around. yes there were moments were they were directly working to find the stepmother but even when they were, it felt like they couldn’t really put their heart into it. which meant i kind of didn’t care whether they succeeded or failed.

emily… oh how i love her. but upon reflecting god does she give mary sue in this book. i hated the turn she takes. fairy queen does not seem like something she would like based on the character we have been shown in the past two books. a lot of the time she feels out of character, or she feels like she’s just doing and saying things because the plot begs her to. and idk the ways she gets out of “danger” this book feel so contrived. i couldn’t buy it. i just sat there by the end going “ugh” because i knew she wasn’t really in any danger. at least the first book has real stakes!!!! girl lost a finger!!! what are the stakes here? literally nothing she gets everything she wants and more 🙄

wendell loses all his character. sure there’s in-text explanations but i couldn’t care less why his characterisation is just “hey look im fuckjng about also im super duper powerful whooo look at me do cool sword shit”. the other books i looked forward to seeing what shenanigans he got up to. but this book? i almost dreaded every time he opened his mouth because idk it irrationally pissed me the fuck off. 

the ending was nice i guess. i mean i still have issues with it because it didn’t feel earned. ok technically it was earned but the way they earned it felt impossible. like based on the rules set in universe, nobody should’ve survived any of the dangerous things that happened. so it feels almost tainted to me. like i know this is a lighthearted story but when you put the stakes that high insinuating every character should be dead and xyz should happen, and they somehow circumvent it because of what boils down to luck….. ohhhh that annoyed me.

what else can i say? i’ll be sad to see this series go, but this book has left a sour taste in my mouth. i felt like with each book in the series the plot got progressively less based in reality, and i can probably drum most of that down to wendell essentially getting god powers whenever necessary and emily being the greatest smartest etc. drydaologist to ever exist. sigh.