The epic conclusion to arc two. Spoilers ahead...
Duchess, Burn and the rest of the allies they have gathered must now find a way to save the Spires and the lands surrounding it for once and all from the evil Spirit of Dark.
Yeah, when I say this is an epic conclusion I mean this is an epic conclusion. We get old and new friends and foes united and working together; epic powers, grand battles and dark creatures; the villain of the Spirit of Dark of course, and overall it's just a grand outing.
I definitely wasn't disappointed with this book. It's just really good and knew when to have the more quiet moments and conversations between the characters and when to go all out with the final battle on an epic scale. Pretty much all characters we've met since the first arc also at least appear or get mentioned, and some even get their own time to shine, sometimes for the last time before their demise.
I also once again really loved the relationship between Burn and Duchess here. I loved them in the last book also, but like I said in my review of that one, I thought their interactions were getting a bit repetitive. That's not the case here, they have plenty of wholesome moments. And of course in the end they get to be together in a whole new way as they're reborn as the new Spirits of Light and Dark. I was kind of sad to see their more down-to-earth eudaemon forms go (because I love eudaemons as a concept and species) but at the same time I think this is a satisfying conclusion to their arcs. They get to be together, presumably forever, and in an all-new form. We all know how much Burn disliked her eudaemon self, so now she finally has a spiritual form she might be more comfortable with.
As for the other characters, like said before, they also mostly all get their times to shine or at the very least appear. Both characters from arc one and two appear and I was even very happy to see Salvo (my old favorite) make his re-appearance though he was thought to have died earlier in this arc. And of course other old favorites such as Step, Hope, Flare, Delta, Sylvia, Brutus; as well as newer faces such as Vigil, Erlik, Rex and more return. I honestly thought that the sub-conflict with Erlik while the bigger war against the Spirit of Dark was going on really worked and was a neat way of adding even more tension to an already huge conflict. And it had a good yet dark conclusion. Duchess kept trying time and again to convince him and to not use brute force (unlike Step probably would), but in the end Erlik really was just a villain who wouldn't listen and she did end up killing him. But at least we know she tried everything within her power not to have to.
My only complaint regarding this book also has to do with the characters, and that's simply is that there's so many of them that it's sometimes hard to keep track of who is who. If the reader were to read the entire series (both arcs) back to back it probably wouldn't be as hard, but as someone who sometimes has a few month in between reading these it was a little bit hard to recall who every single mentioned character was, especially some of the older ones from arc one (I finished reading the first arc roughly a year ago, so it's been a while). Not that it's bad by any means, I think it just might overwhelm the reader a bit.
But aside from that, yeah, this is a good conclusion. I know that there are more projects set in the Spires universe coming out later, time will tell whether or not I eventually get to them. But this was a very solid ending to the first two arcs.
Rating: 5/5
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