This book was so good! I'm super picky about what I rate 5 stars because that pretty much only goes to books that are absolute all time favorites, and this was about as close as it could get without quite making it. I adored reading this.

Sarah's character was so well developed and I loved the story. A lot of action can often feel formulaic to me, but it flowed so smoothly here. I was invested right up until the end, and was honestly kind of bummed this was a standalone. I just never wanted it to end. If you like YA historical fiction about spies, I highly, highly recommend checking out this book. It's so incredibly worthwhile.

The thing that kept it from being a full 5 stars was that at times it felt a little too convenient, a little too coincidental, a little too over the top. I know to some degree all books rely on this, but I struggled a bit with suspending my disbelief at parts. And that's a small criticism. On the whole, this was utterly fantastic.

A really fantastic end to such a worthwhile trilogy. My thoughts on this book are the same as the first two: I highly recommend. John Lewis is truly a great man and I think most people could benefit from reading these books.

One of my favorite books from childhood and I still think it holds up well. This book is very much an introduction to the series, but I think everything (the characters, magic, animals, etc) that Pierce introduces is so fascinating that it works. I will say at points there's a bit too much info dumping, but I still love this book to bits.

Back in the day, this was my least favorite of the series and the only one I didn't reread. But today, honestly, I love it almost as much as the first one. The reason I didn't like it as much was because it's a bit of a departure from the characters I love, Daine spends a lot of this book on her own with animals separated from Numair, and even though he's in it some, he's the only one from previous books to play a major role. I miss the rest of the cast and the normal setting. But that being said, on reread I do really love the story and I love the new cast of all the animals. I think the plot is really strong and I was surprised how much I do love this book.

As a kid, this was always my favorite book to read of The Immortals quartet, and maybe out of Tamora Pierce's entire work. It holds up. Absolutely loved it. I was a bit surprised that I didn't enjoy the first half of the book quite as much (although 'not as much' is relative to my overall enjoyment and I still adored it), but this book's strength is truly in the climax for me. When Pierce writes a dramatic climax, she really goes for it and this was everything I remembered from my childhood.

Reread 4/18/2019:
Still a great book and all my previous thoughts stand, but I just listened to the audiobook and I'm not certain I enjoyed it quite as much as everyone else. It was okay, but I didn't love it and if (when) I reread this book again, I'll definitely go back to the physical copy.

***

It's honestly so nice to pick up an incredibly hyped book and find out it lives up to the hype. It so rarely happens for me. This book was amazing. I read it in a single three hour sitting.

It's almost hard for me to describe how amazing it is, because it's one of those quiet kinds of amazing. Everything about it is just so good that you kind of forget flaws exist. There's something about Courtney Summers' writing style and the way she builds a story that is absolutely breath taking. I start her books thinking they're good but nothing truly spectacular, but by the time the story is reaching its climax I realize I've had trouble breathing for the past hundred pages and I haven't looked up in two hours because I've been so invested.

I loved the ending. I loved the podcast. I loved Sadie's arc and the people she met along the way and the lives she changed. I loved that she didn't go on her way to change any lives and that in many instances, she didn't even realize it. I loved that for all the story was a thriller about rape and murder, it was so very, very real.

This is the second Courtney Summers book I've read and the second one I've felt this way about, and I think I'm coming to the conclusion that she's just one of my favorite writers.

(Tentatively tagging this lgbt+. There are a number of gay characters and Sadie kisses a girl at one point, but there's never any focus on sexuality.)

Edit: Nope, couldn't do it. Knocked it down to 3 stars.

I was disappointed by this book. As a kid, this was one of my favorites of the series and I remember reading this on its own, just picking it off my shelf at random because I loved it so much. But honestly, it didn't quite live up to that the way the rest of the series did. I did still thoroughly enjoy it (4 stars is not a rating I give lightly), but I was expecting another 5. I found it a little dull, and I just wasn't all that interested in the Divine Realms, where a lot of this book took place. It felt like it was avoiding the action in Tortall and then once they did return, it felt a bit disjointed.

But my overall biggest problem was the romance. Daine is 16 in this book and the love interest is 30. I hadn't forgotten that, but somehow in my head I'd aged her up a bit and closed the gap. As an adult, that's disgusting to me and I couldn't get past that. If this wasn't already a favorite, I probably wouldn't have even rated it this high. As it was, I actively ignored the romance and mostly just pretended it didn't exist.

*tagged as favorites as it's one of my favorite series

I'm not sure who this book was for. For the scientifically challenged like me, it seemed too technical and difficult to follow. Much of this book went over my head, although I did gain general ideas from it. On the other hand, Nye spent a lot of time explaining simple concepts and ideas, so I'm not sure it would be very worthwhile for people who actually have much prior scientific knowledge.

But take that with a grain of salt because I am particularly slow when it comes to science, so maybe it was just me. And I listened to the audiobook which makes comprehension even more difficult.

That said, I am glad I read it and I do plan to read his other book. I just wish I'd been able to get more out of this.

This was, above all else, anticlimactic. I feel like for all the magic and assassins and plotting nobility it would have been interesting, but it felt like nothing happened. Problems that were built up throughout the first book were solved in a couple pages and never mentioned again. There were too many characters and too many meandering plot lines that the whole book just felt convoluted and messy. Overall, I didn't care. I lacked all interest in this book. Sitting down to read it every day felt like a chore and I'm glad to be done.

I feel bad that I didn't enjoy this book, especially because I thought her first memoir was so wonderful, but I really didn't at all. It was a series of random vignettes that meandered around many unrelated topics and read much like a school kid's 'what I did over the summer' essay. It only took two sittings to read, but there were weeks in between the two because I just didn't want to pick it up again. It didn't seem like there was anything to get out of this, although I'm quite glad to hear she's doing well. I feel like a pretty awful person for enjoying her book about her kidnapping and not the book about her adjusting to life, but it's how I felt.

I still recommend reading A Stolen Life because that was powerful, but this just seemed unnecessary.