5 stars - I loved it!

Holy hell was this a hell of an ending! I don’t even know where to start with this except that it was a fantastic and emotional ending to this epic story and I am really going to miss it. 

This book starts about a year-ish after the previous book ended. The war is in full swing and all sides are trying to one up each other and win the Starfire Throne. Eimarille continues her plot to destroy her siblings and take over all of Maricol. We see her doing truly evil things that will cause long term damage to Maricol but she won’t stop until she gets her crown. Eimarille may have been an evil person, but we also see her love for her partner Terilyn and her son. I think Eimarille was a great villain of this series but a perfect representation that just because someone is evil, doesn’t mean they can’t also love and have feelings. 

In the previous book we saw Soren and Vanya separating after Solaria was attacked. While it does take a bit of time, we finally see these two reunite and talk about their feelings and their future. I love these two so much and was so happy to see them finally reunite and make a solid plan for the future. These two are now my favorite couple with Hanovi and Blaine in second place. 

We see a lot of character growth in this book. Caris has stepped up and fully accepted that she is a Rourke. She is now running a war and building alliances between countries. She also finally stands up to everyone and starts making her own decisions, even when everyone else doesn’t agree. She goes all in with trusting Nathaniel and assigns him his own tasks now. Soren grows during the book as well. He reluctantly reclaims his past, but refuses to allow everyone to push him into a future he doesn’t want. He also learns to accept that he will no longer be able to be a Warden and he finds a future that works for him. 

The ending of this book was both expected and not. I knew it was going to be an emotional one but it really gutted me and yet made me happy. It was the perfect ending for this world struggling to survive and I would totally read more stories set in this world. 

Overall, this was an epic saga with nonstop action and politics that sucked me in from the very beginning. I have never read a story that was so well developed, with so many POVs, and was so easy to read and follow. Turner really has done an amazing job creating this saga and I really hope she writes more in the future now. 

TW: war themes; death, POW camps; poisoning; kidnapping; imprisonment; death of a partner, sibling, and parents; grief;