Time for the final installment in the Moïra trilogy. It did eventually spawn a sequel trilogy (Gallica), which I may or may not get to later depending on whether I can find the books in Dutch for an affordable price. For now, let's see how Aléa's story ends! Spoilers ahead.
The war is going on in full force, wolf hunting has begun all over the island, and Aléa must now face her final foe: Maolmórdha. Will she succeed in defeating him before the Saîman disappears and it's all too late?
Like the predecessors of this book, it has its ups and downs, but overall just falls into the "decent" category. I would honestly rate this one a tad higher than the other books, but only by a miniscule amount. It was just personally my favorite out of the three.
If you don't like descriptions of war and fighting in books, you probably won't like this much. There's tons of battles that we keep cutting back to and it can get a little confusing if you're not up to date with all the characters/armies and their political stance. I did understand what exactly was happening a little more here than in the last book, but it's still a lot to keep up with.
The whole wolf aspect of this series honestly feels quite pointless. The book covers and titles (including the Dutch translated title of the entire trilogy, Secret of the White She-wolf) made me believe that wolves would pay a huge part in this trilogy. But it's honestly...very minimal.
Book one just gave us Imala's backstory and her first meeting with Aléa, book two had the wolves act as messengers, and book three shows them being hunted down, a plot thread which is honestly never followed up. We don't know if Aléa succeeds in stopping the hunts eventually, we don't even know if Imala survives by the end. I just don't really get what the point is of drawing wolf-loving readers in and then really not following up on it.
There is one major revelation we do get regarding Imala at the very end, which is that she's basically the embodiment of the soul of Aléa's mother. But, honestly, what was the point of it? They never meet one another again after splitting up in either late book two or early book three, and we don't even know Imala's fate or even her true name back when she was a human. It's just kind of weird to suddenly connect these two characters in this way when their bond was never all that strong in the first place. They were drawn to one another for a bit, but Imala went fully "wild" pretty soon after that and chose not to trust humans anymore.
Now, for the main villain, Maolmórdha, I'll just say I'm immensely disappointed. He is barely build up in this and past books, yet still clearly supposed to be our ultimate Big Bad. He also has no interesting motivations or backstory, he just is your most basic necromancer villain who sends henchman after henchman after our main character before trying to take care of her himself.
Then his defeat is just...something that happens? He and Aléa connect using their magic and Aléa somehow manages to either absorb him or absorb his power. It's never fully explained how she does it or even what is happening, but we just know that she wins. Because she's the main character, I guess, because there's no good motivation for how she's winning in the text itself.
It also ends rather creepily with Aléa (who is about 14 years of age) being pregnant? I get that it was different times and a different world, but yikes, dude. Also an immensely bad timing, because we get this revelation moments after she defeated Maolmórdha. Just imagine if she'd lost and had gotten all her force drained by him, she'd probably end up as a slave to him. What a life to give to a child (presuming abortion is not an option here).
So, yeah, I did like this book, but it also had some real letdowns. I definitely did enjoy reading this one the most and I got through it the fastest out of the three, but it's still far from perfect. I do hope the sequel trilogy gets better, because Loevenbruck's worlds and stories do have potential, it just isn't realized so far.
Rating: 3.25/5
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