Astrid Hawk

This book is... fine? Does what it says on the tin I guess... a book that is mostly romance, with a fantasy backdrop. Enemies-to-lovers-to-(spoiler censored).

I think probably romantasy, or at least heterosexual romantasy, is just not my thing, despite the fact that I keep giving it a try again and again (mainly because that's what shows up as options, lately, instead of good epic or high fantasy). I find the characters shallow and stretched beyond all recognition in order to leave an impression. The men are tall, impossibly handsome, and complete assholes right up until they become completely emotionally and mentally hacked by their love for the female character. The women are usually scrappy when it suits the story, but mostly gorgeous and airheaded. They spend much of their mental time in the books berating themselves for falling in love with "such a man" as the male main character and trying to talk themselves out of it, only to be completely overcome the next time they catch a whiff of him. This book is no exception.

What made this story worse than the usual fare is that, not only are the two MCs exactly as I described above, but our heroine Rune has a sidekick and best friend who is amazingly supportive, has his morals all sorted out, never does anything creepy or insulting to her, is basically always thinking of how he can help her over himself... and is of course in love with her. Oh, and he's also the brother of the damaged bad boy love interest, who is in fact aware that his nice guy little brother is in love with Rune. Which makes it doubly difficult to try to sympathize with the love interest Gideon. Or Rune for that matter - who is so self-absorbed that she apparently doesn't notice her friend's interest. "Nice guys finish last" in this world I guess.

I did enjoy the magic system - although I don't read a lot of witchy books, this system felt close enough to common witch ideas to be recognizable but still different enough to feel fresh and creative. Witches in this world essentially do magic by finger-painting with blood. Where they get the blood (and how fresh it is) affects the type of magic it can be used for... and has other consequences as well. There's also this idea that each witch has a unique smell to her magic, and a unique "spellmark" - a ghost image that is left after the spell is cast. Rune spends most of the book doing lesser magic, since she's limited in where she gets her blood - and she actually doesn't even use it that often in the book until the end. But there's still enough magic there to keep it interesting.

There is what (I think) is supposed to be a twist towards the end of the book... but I saw it coming significantly earlier when a supposed-to-be-subtle hint was dropped. I don't know if I just picked up on it because I happen to be sensitive to the thing that was observed, or if it was really that obvious. Regardless, I then had to spend most of the rest of the book being frustrated that the other characters were such idiots and weren't putting 2 and 2 together. I guess I prefer this type of reveal to the one I read recently in "While the Dark Remains", where the reader feels intentionally misled... but still. It wasn't subtle.

Anyway. If you enjoy witches, blood magic without too much gore, and exaggerated characters who go from loathing to apparently mindblowing sex without making much of an effort to get to know each other, this book is for you. If you don't enjoy the romance part... maybe sit this one out, because it's pretty overpowering.

Much more of a tragedy than the preceding two books in the series, and the ending was a bit dissatisfying - I feel like it was a bit rushed, sort of abruptly ending just a few minutes after the action stopped. So many questions left unanswered - although I suppose since half the cast of characters is gone, there wasn't going to be a good way to continue the story to answer them.

The introduction of some magical beasts from another realm that I won't name here also seemed a bit... haphazard? Rushed? I really thought they'd come into play in the end somehow, but they just kind of dropped out of the picture. Perhaps a topic for a future Book 4 (although again, half the cast is gone, so I think the series is considered complete).

On the positive side, I thought the pacing of this one was much better - there was a bit of stage-setting in the beginning that was slower, some recapping of the previous books, but it felt minimal, and the rest of it was pretty consistently building toward the end. I also thought Livingston did a much better job really developing the characters and their relationships in this book than in the previous two. Caden, Shay, Aleera, and Tew - apologies if I'm misspelling the names since I listened to the audio book - especially did a lot of growing in this one (some of which was begun in book 2, but they really seemed to come a long way in understanding themselves and the world in this one).

Overall the series was an enjoyable, easy listen - a good break from my usual nonfiction history or social justice fare. A fun escapist adventure you can just enjoy without thinking too hard about the world, and heroically humble characters you can easily root for.