ladygrey
Normally if it takes me a month to read a book, it's because I don't like it very much. In this case, life happened and also I wasn't quite ready for the story to end.
Like The Ballad of Never After, there isn't much plot to this book. There's a decent about of tension and wandering and just enough repetitive internal monologue to be mildly annoying. But, like Garber's other books, what plot there is twists and almost surprises. It's the twists I think I like the most. The unexpected way the ending isn't really the ending; how the goal they were aiming for isn't what the really want after all.
There is one glaring unanswered question. The story hints that she survived Jack's kiss because they love each other. But it never really explains she survives. ALSO what happened with that last kiss on her wrist. Like so much happens you sort of forget about it by the end. But once I finished the book and started thinking about it, she reminds the reader of that lingering kiss several times then…stops. Then Evangeline kisses him with kind of no explanation when it would have been SO EASY to tie that last kiss to surviving his kiss. If feels like a huge missed opportunity. Though I guess in an almost fairy tale, true love should be enough.
My only other criticism would be that she could have done more with the secondary characters. Chaos and Lala were so richly drawn with their own stories that it felt like their story was unfinished because we only see the parts that serve Jacks and Evangeline.
Garber's world is wonderfully imaginative. Her writing is eloquent. And best of all her characters are fantastic and interesting and wholly make the books worth reading and rereading.