The last in the trilogy! Spoilers ahead!
The final battle for the realm has begun. Whistler is gearing up to enact her evil plans for the world, and it seems only Ottilie and her friends can find a way to stop her. Will they succeed?
Overall I liked this one quite a bit, but not as much as the first two books. It was definitely good and action-packed, but I also had some trouble staying invested here occasionally. There's quite a bit of set-up and exposition here that does pay off, but maybe a little bit too much for a final book in a trilogy where you expect more action now that the war against Whistler has begun.
Another thing I didn't like: the romance between Ottilie and Ned. Seriously, I don't care about Ned as a character, so it's beyond me what Ottilie sees in him. Thankfully the romance is not touched upon very elaborately, but I'd have preferred it if it wasn't touched on at all. It doesn't add much to the story and doesn't seem to have a real resolution as they don't end up together and don't even end up having a real conversation about their feelings for one another (if Ned even feels the same about her in the first place). It's just kind of a romance that was built up but didn't have any closure, so what was the point?
To elaborate on that, the book itself also has a bit of an open ending. It's definitely got some closure; Whistler is defeated, the kingdom going through a re-structuring and the friends go their separate ways, but at the same time the ending is open enough with how the kingdom is going to be handled now. We know who the rightful heir is (Skip), but how is she going to cope with the fact that she's a princess now? And what about the whole rebellion ordeal? And we never even got to see Ottilie re-unite with her mother while she was awake? It's just a bit too open for me to be left satisfied. I'd be okay with a fourth book, maybe an anthology from the POVs of Skip, Isla and Lyre as we see how Skip deals with her new rank, Ottilie explores new realms and Lyre handles the unstable situation in the kingdom and the rebellion.
Another complaint I have: I really think that by now at least one of our core cast should have died. I complained about this in my book two review as well, but it seems that every time someone dies in this book it's 99% of the time an insignificant background character. Here, too. They're in the middle of a climactic war and time and again put into perilous and deadly situations, but our main characters always find a way out. We have a pretty big core cast here; Ottilie's friend group is quite sizable. Her, Ned, Gully, Bill, Maeve, Leo, Scoot, Skip, Isla, Preddy...
There's just quite a few characters here and none of them (and more surrounding them) bite the dust in the end. The worst of it is probably Maestro, Leo's wingerslinks, who is severely injured but okay in the end. After all is said and done the only ones of significance who died were Whistler herself (duh, she's the main villain) and the king (who was hardly even in this book). So it just starts feeling like these characters have an insane amount of plot armor going on.
I get that it'd be hard to kill of child and/or major characters, but I've read multiple books aimed at children of this book's age range that don't hesitate to sometimes kill off major characters and even children in their stories. So why this series is so reluctant I don't know. It just feels unrealistic since they're facing super-dangerous creatures and in a war against the most powerful witch the land has ever known. I'm not saying that Williams should kill off her characters left and right, but one or two major casualties on the side of our heroes would make the conflict feel a lot more real and devastating.
However, what did work in this book did really work. The many exciting scenes were great, the climax was intense, and I loved our characters still, though not all of them. It's overall a pretty neat final book with just some flaws holding it back. That said, I still enjoyed it and should there ever be more books released in this series I'll probably check them out.
Rating: 3.5/5
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