Reviews with content warning for Injury/Injury detail - A Reaper at the Gates

Every time I finish one of her books, I am blown away by Sabaa Tahir’s storytelling. She is a master at weaving together seriously intricate plots all involving different complex characters with varying degrees of overlap. Her twists don’t feel cheap and many truly caught me by surprise. A warning: this series has seriously intense world building and at times it can be a struggle to keep up with names and places.

In this book, Laia is on a quest to stop the Nightbringer and saving those most at risk of destruction along the way. Elias is melding into his role as Soul Catcher, helping Laia when he can but finding it harder and harder to ignore the pull of his duties. Helene is still duty bound to do the Emperor’s bidding and combating the ambitions of Keris Veturia. Every time I think I’ve seen all the layers of these characters and their motivations, Tahir drops another bomb and I realize she’d been laying hints to it all along.

The only reason I’m not giving this five stars is because the complexity of the story makes my dumb brain work too hard to try to keep straight characters and places since we’re bouncing around so much.

Content warnings:
Most are self explanatory and make sense if you’ve already read the previous two books.
Pregnancy (on page):

The Empress Livia becomes pregnant after marrying Marcus. She is an even bigger target for assassination while carrying the heir and Keri’s Veturia manages to poison her. She survives and goes on to successfully deliver the baby (on page) but there are some complications and Helene must use her healing power to keep her sister alive.

Domestic abuse (on & off page):

Marcus really sucks and constantly abuses Livia even as she is pregnant. He does this to keep Helene compliant with his orders.

Content Warnings

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adventurous challenging dark mysterious tense 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? No

4.5

Not my favorite book of the whole series, and sometimes felt like the pacing was off.. BUT I loved the characters so much that it really doesn’t matter that much. It’s definitely a good book and makes the series feel a lot closer to being completed. I love that Helene and Harpers relationship is growing and just over all good book.

Content Warnings