I think(?) this is formally the final installment in the series. There are two more Elementa books out there, but from what I've seen at a brief glance they're supplemental and not formally a part of the series.
Spoilers ahead.
Rather unwillingly, Ember becomes king of the Fire Pack. He soon sets his sights on one thing: becoming an All-Elemental wolf to make up for the fact he was born without a power. But this quest is a difficult one, especially when he starts counting on the wrong wolves.
I wouldn't call this book bad or anything, but I think "frustrating" is the word I'd use here. It does have a lot of good elements that were present in the previous books (such as good characters, neat world-building, an immersive plot, etc.).
But my main frustration with this book really lies with Ember and the fact that his arc and decisions in this book are just super frustrating to read. And I know a character can make mistakes and whatnot and make the reader feel a certain way about them, but if throughout the entire book the reader is just annoyed and frustrated by the protagonist, that's not a good thing. It legit made me want to put down the book at times.
So what's Ember's deal in this book? Like said before, he dreams of becoming an All-Elemental wolf. But his quest and arc to get there is just so frustrating. He's constantly making incompetent decisions and counting on the wrong wolves (Benthos and Burn), or doing obviously evil acts and then telling himself "I'm not evil". And it's not like this is something that happens once or twice throughout the story. This entire book is pretty much constantly Ember making a stupid decision or doing something evil and then internally going "but it won't go wrong for me" or "but I am not evil".
And this is the frustrating part. The fact that even the author seems to be clued into the fact that these decisions Ember makes are unwise and morally wrong and sometimes just plain stupid. And then includes lines like the ones I mentioned above in order to try to justify the decisions.
And of course there's the fact that Ember is our protagonist that makes it all the more frustrating. It's not like he's a side character we come across once or twice. He's our only POV this book and it's annoying as hell to constantly see him fuck up and then try to poorly justify things for himself. Seriously, what did he think was going to happen? Becoming an All-Elemental wolf which he knows tends to go horribly wrong? Attacking the Earth kingdom castle? Trusting two-faced snakes like Benthos and Burn, both of which he knows to be manipulative? Keeping Nautilus captive? None of these are remotely smart or good decisions to make and still he constantly does these things, says "oh but I'm not evil/this won't go wrong for me" and we as the readers are somehow not supposed to find this character writing repetitive and annoying as hell.
It's not that Torro can't do good character writing, the second and third books in this series were quite good at this! Sure, the characters in Elementa usually aren't the most complex or anything, but at least they usually feel decently written. Here, Ember felt just poorly written and like I said before it is very frustrating to read and made me want to put down the book several times.
But I will reiterate: I do overall like this book and think it succeeds in other aspects. As (presumably) a conclusion to the series, it does its job well enough. But I personally just can't get past the frustrating way Ember's character was written here. I've seen other authors do corruption arcs (followed by redemption arcs) well, but this really wasn't the way.
Rating: 3/5
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