By the time I read this I’d forgotten a lot of what happened in the first two books, no fault of the story, but when I began reading it the pieces started to return. 

Full of adventure, conflict, magic, and sacrificial love. A little confusing with the two parallel story lines being told from first person POV every chapter back to back with no context of time-change.

The characters are a gathering of fantasy-types, conflicted and grey, with dark pasts and complex relationships.

It’s good YA storytelling, though nothing literary or poetic. I don’t know why I’m ever expecting literary or poetic in a YA fantasy novel…

The ending is unexpected (was it? Really?), but even though I didn’t initially love where it was going, I finished the last bitter-sweet page, then backed up and read it again—and it was better the second time. And then it lingered and settled and yah, it was okay, it was really all okay in the end…