Reviews

It was a better ending than The Raven King, in that it did have some internal cohesion/logical sense. However, it did all end very fast and was a little Deus ex Machina.

It’s difficult because I like that I can feel safe while reading that the characters I care about will make it out, it makes the reading experience much lower stress, and I can enjoy the tense scenes without being tense. However, it also lowers the stakes and can feel a little unrealistic in the end-of-the-world scenario.

In terms of the characters, the brotherhood in the series was excellent: Declan and Matthew have really grown on me over the course of this series.

Declan it turns out, is me, at least a little bit, and Matthew is just so sweet. I love him, happy even just chilling under a table, listening happily to a disembodied voice, no thoughts just vibes. I loved the parts with him right up until the end, where everything resolves for him off-screen and easily and then he…goes to an unpaid internship on a farm? A lot of the series was about Matthew trying to find his own identity and I feel like character arc/issue wasn’t quite satisfactorily resolved. <i>Does </i> he care about farming? He wasn’t shown to care at all before.
The Declan/Jorden remains *chefs kiss* but the Declan & Niall dynamic was a little off. I don’t know, the big reveal of what Ronan is was a lil crazy and it did ‘other’ him a bit to me and seemed a bit out of the blue. I kind of just want to ignore it.
I…still don’t care about Carmen, sorry. Jordon & Hennessey I’ve got some kind of interest in by book three, but Carmen never quite hit. I did like the twist with her brother, that was completely unexpected.

As for the epilogue; I do like an epilogue. Yes, it was a bit of fanservice, but I like a happy ending. (I also wasn’t expecting any Gansey, who remains the best character in this world, so that was an unexpected bonus.)
(Also, unrelated to anything else, but the ‘Ronan didn’t know if he was awake or if he was dreaming’ was a bit intense on the audiobook)

Overall for this trilogy: I loved seeing more of the characters but I wish the world building and plot were a bit more consistent.

tkanzler22's review

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

readingwithkelsey's review against another edition

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4.0

I have so many thoughts on this finale, and I feel like I need to reread the trilogy to truly wrap my head around what I experienced here. Stiefvater played so much with her writing in this one to convey the way that the characters were thinking (Ronan asking himself if he was awake for 3 pages at a time, for ex). The relationship between the brothers has always been one of my favourite parts of this trilogy so I really enjoyed how this was explored, specifically between Declan and Matthew and how it mirrored Declan's own experience with their father. She also really played into the religious symbolism with Ronan and his parents - I was actually really into these chapters and I WISH this book was longer because I wanted to dive so much more into this concept. I think this is probably my main complaint about this book. Stiefvater really tried to put too much into this book and while it was all super interesting, it felt brushed over too quickly. I wish we had more time to explore all the relationships and themes and it would have made for a much stronger ending. Overall though, I was obsessed with this trilogy and I love the Lynch brothers so I really hope to reread this in the future to get more out of it.

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