Wintersteel

That must be one of the most surprising turn of events in the series, in fact there were a lot of surprises, one of the best books in the whole series, I just can not believe what happened, I was already thinking of something mind blowing, but what happened was way, way better than I imagined!!!!!

As the story progresses, each book becomes better but Lindon, you are still the same, naive, always thinking of the small matters not the big picture....

Yerin, what can I say, genius, selfish, inferiority complex, but still.............no wonder Cradle has such rabid fans!!!

Eithan, my, my, oh was I calling you, no please do continue whatever plots and plans your devious mind is developing

Mercy, you are becoming a female Lindon, naive inspite of being a Monarch's daughter and allegedly successor, I was hoping you will come out of your own darkness, shining but unfortunately.........

And more, a lot more, the foreshadowing, the battle between Monarchs and Dreadgods, Abidan and their unseen enemy.......

Book 9 and still a lot of mysteries.........from an Unsouled and now..................dreams do come true....for some.......and those bloopers HAHAAHAHAHAHA, from straight drama, action packed storyline, to just plain funny..........

This book was so damn good.

Let's talk about Eithan Aurelius for a second. For 7 books now, Eithan has been continuously the best part of this series. I daresay he's one of the most fascinating characters I've ever read about. Whenever you expect him to zig, he zags. Whenever youve caught on, and expect him to zig, he zigs, and challenges your expectations. Every scene with him is great, and he was used superbly in this book.

Yerin...goddamn Yerin. Just such a good character. I don't have much to say about her here because of spoilers, except that she reminds me of a grown up Toph from Avatar, and that is a supreme compliment.

But that's not all! Even LINDON was great in this book. Since Book 6 and onwards, I've started genuinely liking Lindon. And in this book, he completely won me over. He is just such a badass now and he has done some soul searching to figure out what is important to him.

The world building and stakes to this book were very well done. The book made shocking choices; the tournament does not go in the way I expected it to. The villains do not do what I expected them to. The results are not what I expected.

This series went from “eh, it's entertaining” to “Holy shit, I'm gonna put everything else on hold to catch up” very quickly.