Million Worlds with You (Firebird, #3)

by Claudia Gray

[jeannamichel]

I loved it so much but I also had several problems with it.

In A Thousand Pieces of You, Marguerite had to save her dad from being lost to the alternate dimensions. In Ten Thousand Skies About You, she had to rescue Paul’s soul after being torn to pieces. In A Million Worlds With You, Marguerite must save the world, all of them, from Wyatt Conley who is intent on destroying whole universes in order to get what he wants. The finale is surely the high-stakes adventure fans have been waiting for, which will leave readers out of breath as soon as they begin.

A PROMISING BEGINNING

I was so ecstatic that Ten Thousand Skies Above You truly won all of my expectations as a sequel. With that heart stopping cliffhanger, I was waiting for some pure magic in A Million Worlds With You.

Just like the last book, Claudia Gray wastes no time in getting right back into the action. There is absolutely no dull moment; I didn’t even time to catch my breath. It was knocking all the boxes of my highest expectations in the beginning.

Claudia Gray keeps us in check, reminding us exactly where we are in the series. This time, her recap format was fabulous, something that I have only seen in television shows. Gray literally rewinds the ending of the last book for you. So, there is no guessing as to what happened. Of course, the narrative is slightly altered for the new book but the dialogue matches word for word.

To tell you the truth, I thought I was going to be writing a raving review of this novel until I got to 70% way point. Up until that point, we embark on this stressful, yet entertaining adventure. The stakes are extremely high; each chapter ends with question marks of whether Marguerite survived yet another world or not. This time around, she is not only saving the world but saving millions of worlds.

Being such a high stakes thrill ride, it is a fast read. Otherwise, the book may consume you (which is not a bad thing). However, I found that the deeper I got into the book, the more I realized it is like slowly taking off a band aid. As soon as the story began, I could not stand not knowing how it was going to end. I needed to know if everyone made it out all right.

99 PROBLEMS

In my Ten Thousand Skies Above You review, I mentioned about the titles of the alternate universes. They weren’t particularly creative names. In A Millions Worlds With You, I decided to put aside my annoyance only to find something equally bothersome. A universe called Medievalverse in the last book has since changed to Romeverse for no apparent reason. If I hadn’t read the books back to back, I don’t even think I would have noticed but it did put a hiccup in which world was which.

A lot of characters have mentioned time and time again that there are infinite dimensions. However, it strikes me as odd that Marguerite continues going back to the same ones. We get to see a total of three or four new universes, whereas the other universes Marguerite returns to have been places we have been as well. It is endlessly repetitive, and unnecessarily so.

The Firebird, the device in which helps Marguerite travel to different dimensions, can apparently do more things than just dimension travel. It can stabilize but also destroy a dimension. This is, of course, new knowledge to this particular book. This feels a bit like cheating. For example, think of this as your favorite character getting shot but then three minutes later, you discover he had a bullet proof vest on so he is fine. That is totally cheating but on a smaller scale. This kind of cheating that happened in A Million Worlds With You spanned the entire three books. Let’s just not tell you exactly what this device does until it’s important to a plot that may be written in the future. It felt like some kind of knowledge which was being pulled out of thin air.

However, the knowledge about what the device can do is not the only thing that seems to be pulled out of nowhere. Marguerite is literally fixing the messes that her other self left behind. However, the goal was to eventually catch up with this alternate self, which was essentially impossible in the beginning of the book. The goal made no sense, held absolutely no point. And then of course, it’s all resolved, a little too easily. It matches up too nicely for it to seem part of the same plot. It was borderline ridiculous.

After the ridiculous components ceased or I just put them out of my mind, it was difficult to find excitement in the book again. This caused for a lot of the twists and turns that may have gotten me had really become predictable and disappointing.

REDEEMING QUALITIES

As a series, this was most definitely not my favorite but the series was an entertaining whirlwind of dimension travel. The subject was something that is not done very often and I think, for the most part, Claudia Gray did incredibly well with her complex plot structure spanning several dimensions.

Paul and Marguerite will forever be the cutest couple. The scenes they shared felt raw, real, and undeniably gorgeous.

The epilogue was the perfect ending, wrapping everything up in a little bow. The Firebird series closes its curtains with a quiet but nice ending that left me satisfied.

The finale, A Million Worlds With You, is a sour end to an, otherwise, fantastic series. Despite its many holes and ridiculous problems, it closes the series in a satisfying manner that no fan would complain about.