Reviews with content warning for Cursing - Any Way the Wind Blows

Crowley, this book was insane! When I saw this, I knew I had to get it and I'm so glad that I did because this book was the ending I needed. It's gorgeously well-written and honestly should be celebrated!
Simon, Baz, Penny, Agatha, Shepard and Niamh are wonderful and feel really sensitive and real and I love how their relationships are built and developed so they feel like they could really exist in the real world.
Rainbow Rowell, well done - this was spectacular!

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akirma's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional funny hopeful lighthearted fast-paced

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

5.0

I haven't finished a book this quickly in years.

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ajsterkel's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional funny hopeful lighthearted medium-paced

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

5.0

I finished the Simon Snow series Nooo! What will I do with my life now? I've been spending all my free time reading these books.

Does the series really have to be over? There are a bunch of dangling plot threads because the characters decided to let somebody else save the world. They could change their minds and keep things going . . . .

Anyway, this series is about a group of 20-somethings who have finished wizard school and are now in college or starting careers. The final book is Any Way The Wind Blows. It's slightly less plot-focused than the previous books, which is kind of the point. What's a Chosen One supposed to do when his enemies have been vanquished? How's he supposed to live without the whole world watching? What if fighting monsters is his only job skill, and he doesn't want to do it anymore?

The humor and quirky characters are the best part of this series, but I also love that it's set after a wizard war. The characters have regrets about how they behaved during the battles. They're now trying to correct their mistakes. In the process, they make friends with the classmates who had to get out of their way during all the saving-the-world stuff.

This series is awesome because it takes the villains and background characters from traditional fantasy series and turns them into main characters.

My biggest complaint about the final book is the kissing scenes. Most of them become biting scenes. It makes sense because the characters involved are a vampire and a dragon boy who used to be enemies, but it grossed me out. Kissing is unsanitary enough without breaking the skin! I couldn't stop thinking about infections. I hope they brushed their teeth before literally attacking each other's faces.

I'm scared of germs. If you're normal, maybe the biting is fine. Don't let it stop you from reading the book. I enjoyed this series. I'm sad it's over.

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dragon_lord's review against another edition

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medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.75

I just want to say that, even though this review is a little harsh, I did still like this book, at least a little, and am still glad I read it. I just felt like this book (and this series) had a lot of potential that it just didn’t live up to, which is just highlighted by how, in my opinion, the first book was the best one in the series. I liked the previous two books in this series, even though they had their flaws, but this book just felt unnecessary. I’ve seen a lot of reviews saying that the second book was also unnecessary, but I liked the question it posed of “what happens to the chosen one after the story ends”, even if it wasn’t executed in the best way. This book has three different unrelated plots, and while two of them do technically interact with eachother, the third feels like it’s just there to fill pages. The plot felt predictable, and I was able to see the twists coming from a mile away. This feels like it’s just trying to do what the first book did, but worse. The villain feels half-baked and his motives were unclear to the point where I don’t even know if they were fully explained. The climax lacked any suspense whatsoever because, spoiler alert, Simon wins. wow. so surprising. As if there was ever a possibility that he wouldn’t.

This book also dives headfirst into one of my least favorite tropes, with every character having to couple up by the end of the story. As much as I like LGBTQ+ rep, Niamh and Agatha just felt forced and unneeded. But apparently it’s impossible for two characters to just be friends, so of course we also had to get Shepard and Penelope. Is it just me or does it feel like Shepard and Niamh were only introduced into the story to be love interests? I had also hoped that this book would clear up Lucy’s ending from Carry On, which was never very clear to me, but of course it just has to go muddle it up further. It’s unclear if Lucy is actually dead, which I assume she is, how long she’s been dead for, or how she died. Simon only finds out he’s related to her at the very end of the book, meaning that there is almost no time for him to deal with the fact that the Mage is his father. The man who killed one of his best friends, and nearly killed him, is his father. I feel like that would kind of shake up a person, but no. It’s discussed for, what, a paragraph? And then brushed over for the sake of “oh yay look new family”. One of my biggest peeves with the second book was that it didn’t really dive into any of the trauma that Simon and his friends almost definitely have, and this book is just more of the same. For a series that seems like it’s about what happens after the story ends, it seems to be obsessed with manufacturing more plot devices because how could a story ever not have a big bad villain trying to take over Silicon Valley or destroy the world of mages, or whatever it was Smith was trying to do in this book? I genuinely don’t know. It also felt like the author wanted to dive into the lore of vampires more, but only did so in casual conversation that we never get more than a couple lines of. No one actually outright says anything. It’s all hinted at in conversation by characters we already don’t trust.

Honestly, this book has so many problems that the only reason that it’s getting three stars instead of two and a half is that I was already attached to the characters.

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literallyliterature's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional funny hopeful inspiring lighthearted reflective 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

4.75

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vaguely_pink's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional funny mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

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

5.0

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sabinehunter's review

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adventurous emotional funny medium-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

5.0

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msradiosilence's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging emotional funny hopeful inspiring lighthearted mysterious reflective sad 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

5.0

Tldr; there were some shortcomings, but this is one of the best ends to a trilogy I’ve ever read.

Read my full review at: https://www.rainyreader.com/single-post/any-way-the-wind-blows.

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