“I teach you to be warriors in the garden, so that you may never be gardeners in a war.”

Alternate title: Children of Irritation and Inconsistency.

Despite my hopes that this would be an improvement on its predecessor, this was quite the opposite. I've never had an experience with a series before where every book of the trilogy seems as though it belongs to a different series. How on earth is this where the story went after Children of Blood and Bone?

Without going into massive spoilers, the civil war is completely disregarded. The trauma/the war crimes are completely shelved, then abandoned since there's suddenly a new antagonist and new conflict. Suddenly we have an entire dynamic shift, with entire other countries descending and we're meant to deal with it in the series finale, which also happens to be the shortest installment.

I know that things are briefly mentioned, but nothing reached a satisfying conclusion. The few discussions about overcoming their differences/shelving the conflict were a cop-out to avoid actually dealing with anything. Then when everything is done, we have no resolution on what's meant to happen in the wake of the events.

Also, entire characters disappeared with no explanation? One of the main characters from the rest of the series is mentioned maybe twice and then just completely forgotten for the rest of the story.

This also fell into my least favorite finale pitfall but to a startling degree. Every five seconds, a character was reminiscing about the rest of the series. About their past. About their losses. About the first time they looked into [Blank's] eyes and, "oh my gosh, look how much everything has changed since the first book."
It's annoying in and of itself, but it always bothers me that authors use this as a replacement for any actual meaningful conclusions/parallels. Instead of trusting that the story makes you feel the high stakes and the changes from book 1, they continually try to force you to feel something.

It got to the point that I felt the memories made up 3/4s of the book and I just wanted the book to be over. Which you shouldn't think during a final book in a series, especially not one this short.

This is usually when I'd try to find something positive to say but I don't have anything. Everything about this book was just a terrible, terrible mess. I really did enjoy the first book and I wish that the rest of the story had kept up the momentum; unfortunately, that wasn't the case.

Overall, I'm really sad that I disliked this as much as I did. If you're debating on carrying on with the series, I can't say I'd necessarily recommend it for any reason other than to have completed the series.

I think the first book is still worth a read, but I won't recommend the sequels.