Rosanne

The Song of Achilles is one of my favorite reads of 2021. It's a magnificent and heartbreaking love story about Patroclus and Achilles, the last one you may have heard of because of his significant role in the Trojan war. It's a story about a love so pure and unconditional, and about how you can make your own choices even though your path seems already laid out for you. Unfortunately, it's also a story about how fate determines your life course, no matter how much you try to outsmart it.

“I could recognize him by touch alone, by smell, I would know him blind, by the way his breaths came and his feet struck the earth. I would know him in death, at the end of the world.”

It's done, I finished the final book in this amazing series! I'm just going to dive right in with this review. First off, I want to thank Laini Taylor for writing these books, she really has a way with words that make me pause for a minute. However, compared to the other books, I have to say this was my least favorite. I've made a small list of the reasons why:

• The story was still thrilling and I had so much fun reading it, but there was also a lot of information being dumped.
• I didn't like the character Eliza.. At first, she was just boring, and then I felt like she wasn't really part of the story (even though she was actually at the beginning of everything).
• I'm also not sure how I feel about the slightly open ending. Maybe it was this open because Taylor wants to keep writing about the world of Eretz, which I'm absolutely fine with, but I kind of needed closure after three books.
• I think somewhere in book 2, I kind of lost interest in Akiva and Karou's relationship. Of course, I still wanted them to have a happy ending, but I didn't really care as much as I did in book 1. In the end, I was way more invested in Ziri & Liraz and Mik & Zuzana ("the most excellent rabid fairy"😂). I will always be team Akiva, so if he's happy with Karou, I'm happy 😉

That being said, I'm still very enthusiastic about this book and there were so many beautiful moments as well. I loved Liraz's storyline in this book, and I shipped her with Ziri from the moment that was even a possibility. So glad they got together in the end❤️ I'm glad Karou finally decided to create soldiers with honor, that was what I was hoping for in this last part of the series. The chapter in which we get inside Razgut's mind was one of my favorites. He is feisty. At the end of book 2, I was so disappointed in him, but I love his wit and internal dialogue. It reminded me a bit of Gollum on a good day. What was done to him was so cruel, I thought his backstory was very important. And poor Akiva, he just can't get a break, can he? "I keep getting second chances, that aren't rightly mine". If you've read the books, you understand how intensely sad it was when Akiva spoke them😭

Because I've only read two books this month, I'm going to pick this one as my Book of the Month⭐ I will miss the world of Eretz, and I will say goodbye to it with the appropriate words:

I kiss your eyes and leave my heart in your hands.

The first half of the book was a bit slow, but I knew it would pick up eventually. And it did not disappoint! This series finale wasn't as spectacular as Kingdom of Ash, but it was still very well done. I liked the connection between Maas's different worlds, and I can see that another book in the ACOTAR series is indeed needed with all the loose ends.