"Be assured there will be no cliff-hangers in this, our final dance together. As promised, her birth you've witnessed, her life you've lived. All that remains is her death."In many ways this end to the Nevernight trilogy was both an amazing and lackluster read for me, and it's taken almost two and a half months for me to sort through my feelings to write this review (thank goodness I am a note-taker!). But regardless this is going to be a difficult book to review due to it being the end of a trilogy. Tread lightly as the review will discuss spoilers from the first two books.
"How do you kill the monster without becoming one yourself?"There were a lot of threads to weave together in this finale, and Kristoff did a great job of not leaving any loose ends. It was incredibly satisfying to follow Mia's journey from being a Red Church recruit to seeking her final acts of vengeance. But things aren't always what they seem and there's more to uncover...
"We don't know anything. We know all stories end, whippersnapper. Including hers."The narrator's humor and the fourth-wall (page?) breaking humor with comments about the footnotes never ceased to bring me intense amounts of joy. I adore how meta this book is. And the footnotes! How I adore the footnotes, even though they are a pain in the arse to read!
The love triangle? Oooh boy, it set my soul aflame. Mia is torn between an unresolved love she didn't choose to move on from and her love of the present. And the tension it causes is palpable, especially because Ashlinn is the one who murdered Tric in the first place.
Honestly, the character relationships are the highlight of this book for me as a reader. Mercurio, Adonai, Tric, Ashlinn; platonic, familial, romantic. The dynamics and intricacies of the relationship dynamics are done expertly well and you can track the development through the trilogy.
Unfortunately, the pacing of the book was uneven for me and I found myself incredibly bored in parts of the book. This is in part because of the worldbuilding style in adult versus young adult fantasy, but this book seemed to drag more than the prior two in the series for some reason. It took me a month and a half to read this book. I was really invested in the characters and learning more about the religious practices of the world (finally!), but reading the book sometimes felt like a chore.
Overall, I was pretty satisfied with the way that Kristoff finished off this beloved series even though I struggled quite a bit. But this brought made me a big sobbing mess at the end, and I am a bit sad that I won't be able to go on more adventures with this cast of characters.
The ending: I saw the ending coming a mile away from early on in this book after reading this line in chapter 3:
"You die once, you might make it back with her blessing. But cross back over the Abyss once more? You're gone forever."Given the fact that Tric was brought back, followed by Ashlinn, . I felt very disappointed as a reader, because the danger and stakes didn't really mean anything. No one stayed dead. Of course Mia would get the Maw's blessing and her happy ending. She deserved it, but it felt anti-climactic for me and honestly kind of changed my feelings about the earlier books.
Content warnings: child slavery, gore, inferred sexual abuse by a priest, loss of a loved one, murder, sex, suicide, violence
Many thanks to St. Martins Press for providing me an electronic ARC of this book via Edelweiss in exchange for my honest review. Quotations taken from an uncorrected proof and may change upon final publication.
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