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3.95 AVERAGE
3.95 AVERAGE
adventurous
dark
emotional
reflective
tense
slow-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
Content Warnings
Graphic: Racism, Sexism, Violence, Religious bigotry
Moderate: Emotional abuse, Sexual content, Sexual violence
Minor: Animal death, Child abuse, Rape
adventurous
funny
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
adventurous
dark
emotional
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
inspiring
mysterious
sad
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
medium-paced
Loved the multi POV, wanted MORE!!! The build up has been steady, but continued to add new characters and great romantic moments. The end ??!!!!! I knew it !
adventurous
emotional
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Really disappointed. I was expecting something more regarding the plot. I hope the next book will be more focused on the development of the story.
adventurous
dark
emotional
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Woof. Okay.
So straight up, this is definitely the worst book in this series. I'm gonna rant here, and I'm not gonna spoiler-ify anything. So... this is your first and only warning.
Deep breath. Here we go.
This book is all over the place. Right off the bat we get thrown into the perspectives of all of these random people. If you were expecting to jump right into Elloren's POV and her story, you're in for a rude awakening. 2 hours worth of audiobook (and about 15% of the story) is just random ass people living their lives. Was it all necessary? I... I don't really think so.
Oh, what? You thought this book was going to be the one where Elloren comes into her own and learns to control her power? Hah! Instead of being taken to some far off land to be trained, she's taken out into the desert, shows a buncha people just how powerful she is (which is REALLY powerful) discovers she's immune to fire, and immediately just KNOWS it's because she kissed Yvan (an interesting fact, but how the fuck did she just naturally come to that conclusion?????), then immediately gets sent back to Lukas in the heart of Gardnaria. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Vu Trin's decision made absolutely no fucking sense. Why send Elloren back into the hands of the enemy? Why when she's well aware (to the point of almost killing Elloren before letting her go) that the Gardnarians could find out what she was and then turn her and use her against the resistance? Obviously it's for the lame-ass romance. There is literally no other reason. Why not send her to the Amaz? You know--the rune-warded city? Where she could have been protected AND trained in combat and magic? Nooooo not that. It's been 3 whole books now, Elloren needs to fuck somebody!
That's all this book is about. Elloren's love life. Because in everything else she is so fucking useless it's infuriating. Unless you wanna know what kind of tree something is made out of. Because every time she touches wood she's gonna give you it's whole stupid life story. Which is ironic, because she's literally thwarted from learning to control her power by friggin' trees.
Shyea. Vogel isn't even the biggest issue. It's the fucking plant life. I feel like I'm in an M. Night Shamalan movie.
Okay, so the book's just about Lukas' and Elloren's blossoming relationship. Right? Bleh. Not even. The 'spice' in this, if you could even call it that??? is nauseating. Especially the way Lukas and Elloren come together for the first time. It's straight out of some fucked up fantasy version of The Handmaid's Tale. There's no romance, no wooing, no confessions of love. Just "you have to fuck each other now to create a diversion to escape Vogel's clutches". Believe me, it's as stupid as it sounds.
And the whole process dragged out for over 100 pages before they finally did the deed. Over 100 pages of Elloren being degraded and humiliated by literally everybody around her. 100 pages of this stuffy ass-backwards patriarchal society just being okay with (and even encouraging) Elloren being broken and fucked like the whore everybody seems to think she is.
Such a fun read. Exactly what I signed up for.
The whole rest of the book, we get to see her somehow forget she loved Yvan and then fall <s>in love</s> into bed with Lukas. Fuck the fact that she's got this MASSIVE well of power now. Fuck the fact that war's starting and she should be learning how to USE this magic. No no, it's IMPERATIVE she hides her power from everybody, and INFINITELY more important that she gets fucked a few times by the other corner-point of this stupid love-triangle.
We finally get a decent amount of Lukas in the story and it's not even INTERESTING badass mage stuff. It's just him being all fiery and lusting after Elloren! When I tell you I got so fucking sick of his PIANIST FINGERS and their fire-fuckery....
Because, as I said above, instead of it being all cutesy and lovey-dovey, it just turns Elloren into a hobag with no loyalty. Easily swayed by a pretty face. See. We're told by Vogel that Yvan is dead. And Elloren just accepts this as gospel fact without any internal scrutiny of the magic she shares with him or without investigating the truth of the matter herself.
If she really LOVED Yvan, she would have truly grieved his "death". She wouldn't have immediately turned around and started sleeping with/falling for Lukas. Forest seems to think that occasionally having Elloren remember that she lost the love of her life and be sad for about 2.5 seconds that makes it okay to be climbing the other guy like a goddamned tree every chance she gets. Elloren's just gross. Wholly unlikable as a person.
And it's quite sad, because I do think both men actually love her. Both Yvan and Lukas deserve better than her, honestly. She's got the emotional depth of a puddle of piss on a gas station bathroom floor.
Okay, but SURELY this isn't the ONLY thing that happens with Elloren? Surely she manages to escape Vogel (after walking right into his clutches, like an idiot)? Surely she finds allies who'll help train her and start using her power? I mean, yeah. I guess there's some of that in here.
Where's the training montage, you might ask? Oh, don't worry, you'll only have to wait until 90% of the way through this fucking book. I'm not even joking. Literally 90% of the way through the book we finally get to see Elloren begin to train. We get a whole chapter of it.
Isn't that amazing?
Okay, okay. But what about all those other POVs you mentioned?
SOME of the stuff going on with these characters is interesting. But it's clearly not the main plot of the story--we're getting snapshots of all of these people as they travel and meet new people but it's not a truly well-developed story on ANYBODY'S part. Yet we spend half the book bopping around from perspective to perspective. Just shifting POVs from 1st person (Elloren) to 3rd person (everybody else). And it's 3rd person <i>present</i> at that! Vomit.
The fact is we're introduced to like 800 different perspectives, many from characters we've never met or hardly know. And because we spend SO little time with any of them, it's difficult to get close enough to them to give a shit about what's going on around them. Even when we get perspectives from Elloren's friends it's like we're being force-fed shock and dramatics and revelations and there's no time to sit with them and grieve or train or celebrate or anything because we only have 1 or 2 short chapters before we're whisked off again into another POV. I don't think we needed all these different people to show up out of God's blue nowhere. If we could have followed 1 or 2 of the original friend group, fine. But all these other random assholes? Completely unnecessary.
I was enjoying the hell out of this series up until this book. Everything just sort of fell the fuck apart here. We have a heroine who's afraid of her power, who now is 3 VERY thick books into a 5 book series and STILL has little-to-no control over her power and is trying to play the victim because even those she'd ally herself with are afraid of her and want to kill her. This is the same heroine who can't fucking decide who she wants to be with romantically, as if any of that is even remotely important considering THE WORLD IS ENDING all around her.
Everything good about books 1 and 2 evaporates in this book. The comradery Elloren has with her group of refugee rebels is completely gone. The whole book just feels like someone dropped a plate on the floor, watched it shatter, and then scraped all the pieces together in a futile attempt to make some semblance of a plate again, only now pieces are missing and nobody has any glue.
I dunno man. This story is a fucking dumpster fire. What the hell.
I tried to give this 3 stars. But I just... can't.
So straight up, this is definitely the worst book in this series. I'm gonna rant here, and I'm not gonna spoiler-ify anything. So... this is your first and only warning.
Deep breath. Here we go.
This book is all over the place. Right off the bat we get thrown into the perspectives of all of these random people. If you were expecting to jump right into Elloren's POV and her story, you're in for a rude awakening. 2 hours worth of audiobook (and about 15% of the story) is just random ass people living their lives. Was it all necessary? I... I don't really think so.
Oh, what? You thought this book was going to be the one where Elloren comes into her own and learns to control her power? Hah! Instead of being taken to some far off land to be trained, she's taken out into the desert, shows a buncha people just how powerful she is (which is REALLY powerful) discovers she's immune to fire, and immediately just KNOWS it's because she kissed Yvan (an interesting fact, but how the fuck did she just naturally come to that conclusion?????), then immediately gets sent back to Lukas in the heart of Gardnaria. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Vu Trin's decision made absolutely no fucking sense. Why send Elloren back into the hands of the enemy? Why when she's well aware (to the point of almost killing Elloren before letting her go) that the Gardnarians could find out what she was and then turn her and use her against the resistance? Obviously it's for the lame-ass romance. There is literally no other reason. Why not send her to the Amaz? You know--the rune-warded city? Where she could have been protected AND trained in combat and magic? Nooooo not that. It's been 3 whole books now, Elloren needs to fuck somebody!
That's all this book is about. Elloren's love life. Because in everything else she is so fucking useless it's infuriating. Unless you wanna know what kind of tree something is made out of. Because every time she touches wood she's gonna give you it's whole stupid life story. Which is ironic, because she's literally thwarted from learning to control her power by friggin' trees.
Shyea. Vogel isn't even the biggest issue. It's the fucking plant life. I feel like I'm in an M. Night Shamalan movie.
Okay, so the book's just about Lukas' and Elloren's blossoming relationship. Right? Bleh. Not even. The 'spice' in this, if you could even call it that??? is nauseating. Especially the way Lukas and Elloren come together for the first time. It's straight out of some fucked up fantasy version of The Handmaid's Tale. There's no romance, no wooing, no confessions of love. Just "you have to fuck each other now to create a diversion to escape Vogel's clutches". Believe me, it's as stupid as it sounds.
And the whole process dragged out for over 100 pages before they finally did the deed. Over 100 pages of Elloren being degraded and humiliated by literally everybody around her. 100 pages of this stuffy ass-backwards patriarchal society just being okay with (and even encouraging) Elloren being broken and fucked like the whore everybody seems to think she is.
Such a fun read. Exactly what I signed up for.
The whole rest of the book, we get to see her somehow forget she loved Yvan and then fall <s>in love</s> into bed with Lukas. Fuck the fact that she's got this MASSIVE well of power now. Fuck the fact that war's starting and she should be learning how to USE this magic. No no, it's IMPERATIVE she hides her power from everybody, and INFINITELY more important that she gets fucked a few times by the other corner-point of this stupid love-triangle.
We finally get a decent amount of Lukas in the story and it's not even INTERESTING badass mage stuff. It's just him being all fiery and lusting after Elloren! When I tell you I got so fucking sick of his PIANIST FINGERS and their fire-fuckery....
Because, as I said above, instead of it being all cutesy and lovey-dovey, it just turns Elloren into a hobag with no loyalty. Easily swayed by a pretty face. See. We're told by Vogel that Yvan is dead. And Elloren just accepts this as gospel fact without any internal scrutiny of the magic she shares with him or without investigating the truth of the matter herself.
If she really LOVED Yvan, she would have truly grieved his "death". She wouldn't have immediately turned around and started sleeping with/falling for Lukas. Forest seems to think that occasionally having Elloren remember that she lost the love of her life and be sad for about 2.5 seconds that makes it okay to be climbing the other guy like a goddamned tree every chance she gets. Elloren's just gross. Wholly unlikable as a person.
And it's quite sad, because I do think both men actually love her. Both Yvan and Lukas deserve better than her, honestly. She's got the emotional depth of a puddle of piss on a gas station bathroom floor.
Okay, but SURELY this isn't the ONLY thing that happens with Elloren? Surely she manages to escape Vogel (after walking right into his clutches, like an idiot)? Surely she finds allies who'll help train her and start using her power? I mean, yeah. I guess there's some of that in here.
Where's the training montage, you might ask? Oh, don't worry, you'll only have to wait until 90% of the way through this fucking book. I'm not even joking. Literally 90% of the way through the book we finally get to see Elloren begin to train. We get a whole chapter of it.
Isn't that amazing?
Okay, okay. But what about all those other POVs you mentioned?
SOME of the stuff going on with these characters is interesting. But it's clearly not the main plot of the story--we're getting snapshots of all of these people as they travel and meet new people but it's not a truly well-developed story on ANYBODY'S part. Yet we spend half the book bopping around from perspective to perspective. Just shifting POVs from 1st person (Elloren) to 3rd person (everybody else). And it's 3rd person <i>present</i> at that! Vomit.
The fact is we're introduced to like 800 different perspectives, many from characters we've never met or hardly know. And because we spend SO little time with any of them, it's difficult to get close enough to them to give a shit about what's going on around them. Even when we get perspectives from Elloren's friends it's like we're being force-fed shock and dramatics and revelations and there's no time to sit with them and grieve or train or celebrate or anything because we only have 1 or 2 short chapters before we're whisked off again into another POV. I don't think we needed all these different people to show up out of God's blue nowhere. If we could have followed 1 or 2 of the original friend group, fine. But all these other random assholes? Completely unnecessary.
I was enjoying the hell out of this series up until this book. Everything just sort of fell the fuck apart here. We have a heroine who's afraid of her power, who now is 3 VERY thick books into a 5 book series and STILL has little-to-no control over her power and is trying to play the victim because even those she'd ally herself with are afraid of her and want to kill her. This is the same heroine who can't fucking decide who she wants to be with romantically, as if any of that is even remotely important considering THE WORLD IS ENDING all around her.
Everything good about books 1 and 2 evaporates in this book. The comradery Elloren has with her group of refugee rebels is completely gone. The whole book just feels like someone dropped a plate on the floor, watched it shatter, and then scraped all the pieces together in a futile attempt to make some semblance of a plate again, only now pieces are missing and nobody has any glue.
I dunno man. This story is a fucking dumpster fire. What the hell.
I tried to give this 3 stars. But I just... can't.
I will try not to add to many spoilers but just in case read at your own risk :)
Well I’ve officially caught up in the black witch series and I can honestly say I’m not sure what I feel... the first few chapters had me a little all over the place with the various character updates and it felt a little slow to start.
I fell deep in love with both the black witch and the iron flower stories, re-reading them over and over again until the Shadow Wand came out and while I loved being back in Erthia I felt like this story lacked some of the magic the first two stories brought me. I wanted more of the power Elloren started to really show at the end of iron flower and it didn’t really happen until almost the end of the shadow wand.
I also wanted more information on Yvan as he really stole it for me in the iron flower but now I can’t believe it but I might be jumping ship to team Lukas because of how incredibly selfless, loving, supportive, and unfailingly heroic he has been to not only Elloren but to others who are supposed to be his sworn enemies. Lukas was my absolute favorite part of the story and played his roles very well.
I can certainly say I am looking forward to seeing what happens in the next book being left with such a HUGE cliffhanger and I’ll be holding onto hope that my boy Lukas has a BIG role in the Demon Tide because he’s got my vote 100%
However I loved all of the insight into the different magical abilities of the various characters in this book, hearing their sides and thoughts really made a difference in how they view all of the other beings. I loved, loved, loved the Dragons!
Well I’ve officially caught up in the black witch series and I can honestly say I’m not sure what I feel... the first few chapters had me a little all over the place with the various character updates and it felt a little slow to start.
I fell deep in love with both the black witch and the iron flower stories, re-reading them over and over again until the Shadow Wand came out and while I loved being back in Erthia I felt like this story lacked some of the magic the first two stories brought me. I wanted more of the power Elloren started to really show at the end of iron flower and it didn’t really happen until almost the end of the shadow wand.
I also wanted more information on Yvan as he really stole it for me in the iron flower but now I can’t believe it but I might be jumping ship to team Lukas because of how incredibly selfless, loving, supportive, and unfailingly heroic he has been to not only Elloren but to others who are supposed to be his sworn enemies. Lukas was my absolute favorite part of the story and played his roles very well.
I can certainly say I am looking forward to seeing what happens in the next book being left with such a HUGE cliffhanger and I’ll be holding onto hope that my boy Lukas has a BIG role in the Demon Tide because he’s got my vote 100%
However I loved all of the insight into the different magical abilities of the various characters in this book, hearing their sides and thoughts really made a difference in how they view all of the other beings. I loved, loved, loved the Dragons!