The Forever Song (Blood of Eden, #3)

by Julie Kagawa

[inlibrisveritas]

Julie Kagawa is without any doubt one of my favorite authors, I know this even without having read most of her Fey series. She doesn’t let her characters go the path of least resistance, and if they do she always makes sure they see the downside. She doesn’t worry about humanizing things that are not human, instead she focuses on who they are and how they come to terms with it. After reading vampire book after vampire book that focused on making it seem like ‘they’ are still like ‘us, and trying to turn them into romantics and humanitarians, books like this are a welcomed relief.

The Forever Song picks up shortly after The Eternity Cure ends, with Allie dealing with her loss (or not dealing with it) and chasing after Sarren with her sire and blood bother. We get to see Allison deal with her monster, and even though it was never hidden from us that that danger always lurks below the surface I think The Forever Song brings that issue to the forefront. At any point in time Allison could loose it entirely, and the only thing stopping that switch from being flicked is her hope in humanity and her willingness to hold on what she has left of her own. It’s a thin barrier at times and we get to see how much of a struggle it can truly be. We finally get to see exactly what Sarren is up to and the lengths he is willing to go to achieve it, and let me just say this dude is seriously messed up.

Allie is still the same kickass girl from before, even when things to get to be too hard or too chaotic. As I said before she struggles with that balance of vampire and human, and I really liked seeing how she grew stronger as a person even when it seemed like she might be giving in. Of course there is also Jackal, who is just as much a loud mouth as he ever was…maybe even more so. I loved seeing him and Allie bicker back and forth like actual siblings, and the rare moments where Kanin actually gets annoyed with them are great. I even liked seeing Jackal flip the tables on everyone’s expectations without ever compromising who he was. There were a few moments where I became briefly irritated with Allie and Jackal but it wasn’t anything that hindered me from continuing to flip through the pages as fast as I could.

As it is the last book there isn’t much I can say about the overall plot without spoiling too much and I want everyone to enjoy it as much as I did. The story is fast paced, the body count is high, and the whole thing ended with a book hangover of epic proportions. I’m really sad to see this series end, but it was so good I have hopes I might revisit it in the future!