The Keep of Ages is the third, and final, installment of The Vault of Dreamers series by Caragh M. O’Brien and if you haven’t read any books in this series, you may want to check out my earlier reviews and then of course, go dive into book one so you can see why I enjoyed this series so much. With that said, I will try to avoid spoilers for this third book but can’t promise for books one and two so now you are warned.

As this book picks up, we are back with Rosie who has headed home to find that her mom, Larry, and Dubbs are gone and Rosie has no idea where they are – the only clue being a note that Dubbs left her to point her in the right direction. Rosie is still being hunted by Berg and this makes things dangerous. She has to be careful and knows she has very few people she can trust so as she heads out, she makes the decision to reach out to Burnham to ask for help.

We get a lot of the same characters in this book as we had in the previous books. Burnham, Thea, Berg, and Linus but we also get introduced to Lavinia Jacobs, the person who started The Forge Show and the person who is able to help Rosie get her family back. All of these characters have an impact on Rosie and help to keep the story on track. Thea is probably the most disconnected based on the fact that she is back home with her parents but through phone calls, we see that she is still very much linked to Rosie and even has some critical information for her.

Both Linus and Burnham have challenges they have to overcome due to Berg’s plans for Rosie but both are willing to do whatever they need to in order to help her stay out of Berg’s control and save her family. Of course, I have always been a fan of Linus and despite how the last book ended, was optimistic about the relationship between him and Rosie…I had concerns, no question but as we find out early on in this book, Linus is willing to do whatever he needs to in order to be there for Rosie and I love that about him.

As the story progresses, Rosie finds herself in some challenging situations and I have to say, Grisly Valley is a thing of nightmares – trust me, the name is appropriate. When Rosie is once again back under the control of Berg and his people, she realizes that she has to figure out how she is going to get herself (and Dubbs) out of their prison and I loved the twist here. It was slightly unexpected and ultimately added a little something to the rest of the story.

There is a science fiction feel to this series in that O’Brien builds the story around this idea that scientists can go digging around in someone’s brain and mine memories or cameras can be installed into someone’s eye…without them knowing about it. All of which makes me cringe and wonder what would a world like this really be like for people…especially with people like Berg in power.

There isn’t much more I can say without giving anything away with this one. In the end, I thought O’Brien did a great job of closing out this series. I have a bad tendency to put off reading final books in a series because I either don’t want it to end or I am worried I won’t be happy with what happens. With that said, I knew that this was one I needed to read because I needed to find out what was going to happen. Things definitely weren’t easy for Rosie but I thought the closure left things in a good place for her and all of the other characters.

Although I am sad to see the end of this series, I am happy I was able to finish it out and now I look forward to whatever Caragh O’Brien decides to write next because this series just solidified how much I enjoy her books. They always have interesting and well-developed characters, a page-turning story, and of course, keep me engaged until the very end just wondering what is going to happen next. I can’t ask for more than that and if those are things you typically look for too, consider checking this book/series out.

Thank you to the publisher for the review copy!