"An army of competitors can be wielded; an army of comrades can overtake."

A very conflicted three stars?

Before I get into my conflicted feelings, I want to say: like the previous installments, this is an incredibly readable book. I read it in two sittings and flew through it, which seems rather surprising considering how repetitive I found the first 60-ish% of the book. This is still a series I've enjoyed, even if I have no clue how I feel about this one.

I also want to say that I appreciated the focus on Keera's relapse, even if I felt like it led to some incredibly monotonous scenes at the beginning. She's remained a complex, imperfect character - which is something I've loved about her from book 1. I did feel like the very end of her dealing with it was rushed, but I still appreciate how it was included.

Carrying on.

The longer I sit with this, the more disappointed I become. It feels like every five seconds since I finished this book last night, I realize a new plot-hole or get more upset over how something was handled. Since book 1, I've had overall issues with parts of the plot that I felt would fall apart if you looked at them too closely - this particular book said, "hold my beer."

So much of this plot hinges on aspects that don't hold up if someone thinks about them for too long. Damian's character? Just evil for the point of being incredibly evil, I guess? Despite the fact he's more prevalent in this book, it's more to hold up as the villain than as an actual person. Why is he so evil? Why does he hate Keera specifically this much? Is it just because

he's still pissed Brenna didn't choose him

? How does his magic even work?

There's more I could talk about it but I want to spend the rest of the review on that plot-point.

What the fuck.

Here's the thing, I questioned it alllll the way back in book 1. It seemed absurdly obvious and then I let it go once it seemed a.) impossible and b.) an idiotic decision. So imagine my surprise when it actually came to pass.

Beyond my personal irritation (I'll get to that), it. doesn't. work. Do you know how much of the plot falls apart with this reveal? How many times Killian/Riven has done incredibly harmful things to keep up this charade? Not to mention how manipulative and pointless this seems, or how little it actually gets explained. Particularly if we go back to book 1, all the way back to the first moment Riven pissed me off - that gets even fucking weirder.

More on the personal irritation front now, if you've read my previous reviews you will know that I don't like Riven. At all. In fact, I think I kinda hate the guy? He waffles between the world's worst asshole and a whiny child that can't do anything on his own. Since book 1 he was made out to be this traumatizing shadow figure, then we meet him and he can't even kill people, really? And that's only gotten worse as his personality has melded to keeping Keera safe above all else -removing any agency.

What upsets me even more, is that I liked Killian. He was nice. Thoughtful. Had a brain. And instead of this reveal making me feel like Riven actually had some of those good qualities all along, I just feel like someone scooped Killian's soul out with a melon baller and dumped Riven in so that we could have Keera not have guilt for being attracted to both of them.

I'm also incredibly pissed at how Keera handled it. That was so out of character and not in a way that made me feel like she'd grown, but in the way that romance heavy books do sometimes where the romance matters more than anything else. Someone incredibly important to her just died because he'd lied and manipulated her for a very long time. The implications of what he had been doing/saying/thinking all this time and the fact he only told her the truth because he was left with no choice, should have been massive. They should have made her (righteously) angry.

And saying, "Wait, Damian wants me to hate him - and he hasn't actually done anything wrong - so I forgive him." was so irritating.

Then! While everyone else is grieving and preparing a funeral, they decide to have make-up sex. All night long. Yay.

All of this to say, I'm terribly conflicted. I've enjoyed this series, this was a quick and easy read, it still maintained some of what I love from the previous installments; it also leaned very heavily into the aspects I haven't liked and even made some of them a million times worse.

I will definitely read the last book when it comes out and I will still recommend this series, but I don't know where I stand with it personally right now.