This book caps of the trilogy with a grand epic fantasy war. However, I feel like it got too grand for its own good, and lost some readability and relatability along the way.

Here's a link to my video review: https://youtu.be/bqJ33eMl384?t=8

This book starts 8 years after book 2, Shorefall. Sancia, Berenice and the team are in the middle of a war they have been fighting for years, one that they are dangerously close to losing.

This 8 year time skip is used extraordinarily well. It breathes new life into the story, and provides a mystery of what happened in those skipped years. The world has changed in the meantime, and it's left to us to adjust to it.

In this book, the antagonist is a hivemind force. The protagonists are building their own kind of hivemind society, through the twinning magic. This provides an interesting thematic contrast in the story, as we see both the good and horrific features of a hivemind setup. I only wish that this had been used more, as it seemed to have so much potential. The characters seem tangentially aware of the fact that they are a reflection of the antagonist, but I wish that this had in some way played a larger part in the ending, where it seems all of the horrors of a hivemind situation are forgotten.

One of the fun parts of a magic system is the feeling of figuring out how it works. However, the magic in this book is so complicated that there are diagrams explaining the connections. After I read the passage three times, I still didn't understand what the diagrams were even trying to convey. At this point, the magic is so complicated that it has lost its fun.

The covers of these book are absolutely gorgeous. I can't stop talking about how perfect they are.

Thanks to Random House Publishing Group (Ballantine) and Netgalley for a copy of this book to review. All opinions are my own.