1.75 stars
Overall series rating 3

Oh my god! This book was bad. It's an unnecessary addition to series. I think the plot could've easily be summed up in a duology.

I don't understand what went wrong here. It felt like the publishers had a gun pointed at Leigh Bardugo, and they forced her to write this third book when she clearly didn't have enough material for the book.

It felt like alot was happening but nothing actually happened. 80% of the book was just an unnecessary mess and the rest 20% was disappointing.

Mind you! I didn't not hate this book for how it ended or for who ended with who. It was just bad plot wise.

Nikolai part in second half was clearly a ploy to get rid of him temporarily cos i am pretty sure Leigh had no idea how to use him. What Waste of a great character!!

Let me tell you what I expected going into this book and what I actually got.

⚠Spoilers Ahead⚠

My Expecations

1. I wanted to know what exactly Merzost was and how it worked. How some grishas were able to create matter while others couldn't.

2.  What Morozova was thinking when he created the amplifiers? Why did he want grishas to have such great amount of power?

3. I hoped for Nikolai and Alina team up against The Darkling.

4. Darkling revealing his soft side or we getting to know his past and understanding his motives but that didn't happen. He was bad to to the core.

5. What happened to Genya was bad,  but I was hoping she would redeem herself somehow for betraying Alina, but didn't happen either. She didn't even apologize.

6. More plot driven action and character development.


What I actually got

1.  Harry Potter like hunt for Horcruxes.

2. Found out that darkling and Mal were somehow related to Marozova, and that Mal was an Amplifier. We got no explanation as to why the Grisha who tested him as a child couldn't detect his powers.

3. Nikolai's metamorphosis.

4. The revelation that Mal, in very harry potter fashion, was an horcrux himself and must be sacrificed in order to defeat The Darkling.

5. Having all three amplifiers took away all of Alina's power instead of giving her the powers. It made me wonder what exactly Marozova was doing? If he wanted to give grisha the power to control everything then his horcruxes did the opposite. Was he wrong about everything and his experiment failed? Or was this intentional?

6. Found that grisha can bring people back to life. I mean what? How? You can't throw this kind of stuff without explanation.

In short there was less plot and more plot holes. Thank God! I read six of crows first, cos I would dreaded to pick six of crows after this book. The world and its rules in this book were half baked. I hope to get some answers in King of scars.

I would never recommend this book to anyone, ever.