I love this series and I love Beka Cooper and I love the Tortall books. I even loved a great deal of this book. However, there was one thing that happened that ruined it for me (everyone who's read this book immediately knows what I'm talking about). Honestly, the first time I read this was right after it came out and I was so excited for the series finale. The twist at the end shook me so bad that I gave it one star immediately because that ruined the whole story and all the characters for me. Upon reread, I don't think that was really fair. There were a lot of good points about this book and the one bad thing doesn't entirely negate everything, just a lot of it.

Positives: I still love Beka. I still love mysteries. The prince has been kidnapped and she must find him using her scent hound and that's fun to me. Like it's a fun story and there's a lot of discussion on slavery and what that means, especially child slaves. I just really like it overall.

Negatives (apart from the one bad thing): I think the romance in this was rushed. I do quite like the romantic lead and his relationship with Beka, but I think it needed to be slowed way down because I found it hard to buy into and get invested. Beka has never been a character who begs and it didn't make sense that she was begging him. I also think it was a bit in poor taste that it happened immediately after her fiance was killed. It was just one of those things that didn't need to happen. There was honestly no reason for her to even have had a fiance since he seemed mostly irrelevant in this book and had literally never been mentioned before.

I think the diary in this was a bit of a struggle as well. Because of certain events that happened, Beka was unable to keep her diary for a significant period of time. A lot of the writing in this book is done "much later" from her memory. I don't mind that the diary elements of these books has always felt a bit ridiculous and completely undiary-like. For me, that's better than the alternative of it actually reading like a real diary. But the form really felt like it was being stretched to the limit here, to the point where it did bother me.

It also got a bit boring at points, which was an issue I had with Bloodhound as well. In this she's tracking the prince through lots of wilderness. Exciting things happen, but there's only so much riding and camping and complaining about swamps and bugs and such that I can really bear. I honestly liked Terrier much more for the sedentary nature of it. The traveling bored me, and they were constantly traveling.

Now all that aside, this probably would have been 3-4 stars for me, much like Bloodhound. Had some issues, but still a good story. However. The bad thing. Dear god. I can't remember the last time I read something in a fiction book that made me so angry. I'm not someone who gets upset because of stuff like my favorite character dying. I mean like, I might cry, but I'm not going to get mad at the book or the author. If their death makes me sad, that's good. The author is doing something right and I enjoy that I've been made sad. That's the type of reader I am.

In this book, a character does something stupid (that's basically the vagueness I'm going with because spoilers). I'm not mad that a beloved character did something stupid, I'm made that it didn't fit with their character, it didn't fit with the story, it didn't make any sense. The first time I read this book, I wasn't even initially upset. I was just confused. Like sure, it's "justified" through some whatever explanation, but the explanation does not logically fit with this character and this world and this situation. (At least in my opinion, obviously it's all subjective.) I thought reading it again I'd be able to pick up clues and foreshadowing early on and I did, but it feels so forced. It feels like the kind of thing Pierce thought of early on and decided she liked it, so she forced it into this book even though it didn't fit with the character.

It was one of those things that made me mistrust the author and the storytelling. Not because my favorite character did a stupid thing, but because a character who has been developed over the course of years and multiple books did something that made no sense for the development we've seen and their past actions.

Spoiler

No one will ever be able to convince me that Tunstall, who literally turned down promotions because he liked being a street dog, would have attempted to murder Beka. Let alone everything else.

In all honesty, I will probably keep rereading Terrier and just pretending it's a standalone. I don't think Bloodhound is anything spectacular to write home about and the storytelling choices in Mastiff don't work for me at all. I can see why people enjoy this as a finale, but I can't get past the plot twist.