Book Review: Shifting Sands by Sophie Torro (The Wolves of Elementa #3)

 

This one I was the most excited for, since Sandstorm is my favorite character. Spoilers ahead.

When Aurora arrives at Sandstorm's place asking for help, the proud and fierce Earth wolf will have to put aside her ego to learn what friendship means, who she really is, and stand up for what is right.

Overall this was a great book, I think I liked it even more than book two, which was already really good. The reason for that is simple: the main character. 

Aurora and Nautilus are fine characters, don't get me wrong, but I already loved Sandstorm in book one (she doesn't appear much or at all in book two). She is back here and boy is she fun to read as a POV. She's such a nuanced character. Sure, she is very fierce and standoffish and proud, but there's so many layers to her of self-doubt, pushing away others and not embracing who she is without her powers. Seeing Sandstorm change and to through ups and downs in this story was a treat and I was just rooting for her the entire way through. She's the perfect combination of being likable but also flawed.

The plot this time was also interesting still and it was great to see more of the Earth kingdom. I particularly liked the characters of Queen Sahara and King Mesa, they were very well-written supporting characters. Storm was also decent and I liked Flower. Ash was...Ash, I guess. But the character writing in this book was overall really strong.

I also am quite excited to get to read from Ember's POV next book. Something is definitely up with him this book, but since he's barely in it we don't know what exactly. Is he truly an irredeemable villain now, or is there a reason for why he is acting like this? Is he being manipulated behind the scenes? Does he even still love Aurora? All great questions set up for the next (and presumably last) installment.

If this book does have a flaw it's that sometimes it can still be a bit exposition-heavy and the exposition isn't always delivered very naturally, an issue that was also present in the last book. There'll be scenes where Sandstorm is literally spelling out her feelings to the reader and I'm like, come on, that's not really necessary. Your readers aren't stupid, they can figure how how Sandstorm is feeling by her actions and body language and other thoughts. 

But overall this was a strong book and I look forward to the next.

Rating: 4/5