Reviews

4.75 stars!

What an amazing journey this trilogy has been!
By far one of the most INCREDIBLE, UNIQUE, THRILLING stories I've read in a very very long time.
I found myself staying up late reading because I just had to know what happened next! It truly reminded me of my middleschool/highschool days reading Harry Potter and PJO for the first time. That magical feeling of being transported to a different world through the pages of a book is something I truly cherish and this book DID THAT for me!!

I have some minor gripes with this final book and I think liked the first two books more than the third (hence the 4.75 stars) but it was still great! I highly HIGHLY recommend this series to everyone!

So what I loved about this final book:
- The worldbuilding: I loved being able to see another area of Daevabad: Ta Nytry! The jungle, coastal palace city was absolutely breathtaking. I think if I were to visit this world, I would go to Ta Nytry. I loved Hatset's character and her protectiveness over her son, Ali.

-I loved (and at the same time hated lol) how Manizeh absolutely went off the rails in this book. Watching her descend into tyrannical, genocidal maddness was so fascinating. It was wild to me that she really thought using blood magic and killing her own people was the "right" thing to do. It just shows how trauma and power can absolutely corrupt a person's soul and morality.

-Watching Nahri cut into Ali's heart for the seal was an absolutely amazing, heartwrenching, suspenseful scene!! Jamshid scrambling for the ring on the floor while Nahri was trying to stop Ali's heart from bleeding out was WILD. And in the end when Nahri just put the ring on herself and healed him and she didn't die cause she was shafit??? I was like YESSSSSS!!! FINALLY!!

-Muntadhir and Jamshid getting their happy ending that they DESERVE! <33 I'm so happy they are going to live in a cute little apartment in Daevabad together away from the palace intrigue and drama.
-Ali and Nahri: Finally getting their first kiss!!! But then it was cut so short by tragedy of Ali requesting Nahri to cut the seal out of his heart. UGH!

What I didn't love
-Ali's adventures with the marid kinda confused me a little bit??? I still don't quite understand why he had to go and sacrifice himself to Tiamet. Why HIM?!?! Also while he was down there in the marid realm I had a bit of a difficult time visualizing all those weird sea creatures and what was happening to him down there. I kinda just wanted it to be over and for him to go back and be with Nahri. I guess the deal they struck with him makes sense, but I just felt so sad that Ali had to loose his fire magic!! :(( Maybe it would feel more justified if I understood why he had to go down to Tiamet in the first place lol.

-I wanted a little more Zaynab and Aquisa in this book! I feel like we barely saw them together. I have a suspicion they are secretly in love??

-DARA. Ugh. This infuriating man annoyed me so much. I can't stand the horrible choices he continues to make again and again and yet at the same time he keeps playing the victim card and using his prejudices against the shafit as excuses for Manizeh's horrible horrible actions. I can't BELIEVE he didn't stop the genocide against that Geziri as soon as he saw Manizeh's horrible killing potion at work. He was an ACCOMPLICE to all the lives killed that night. He could have easily stopped Manizeh. I don't care that he was an Afshin and he couldn't kill his Nahid. He should have grown a back bone and done what was right and saved thousands of lives!! I really don't like his relationship with Nahri at all. They were only together for a little bit and yet have this intense love for eachother?? No thanks. I was surprised he survived this whole war. I kinda wanted him to die saving the city. I feel like that would have been a way for him to kinda redeem himself? But no. He's alive going after the ifrit which I guess is good too.

-Pretty much all the main characters got a happy ending and survived and I'm not sure that felt super realistic to me??? This war was intense and world changing. The fact that every main character survived and got a happy ending is wild to me. (yes Ali was changed to marid but still . . . ). I think I would have preferred if Dara and (heartbreaking I know) Muntadhir had died. It would have felt more like real-life where not everything works out neatly like you want.

“Not wanting to be destroyed by despair doesn’t make you a coward. It makes you a survivor.”

“She told me to keep myself whole. That there wasn’t any shame in taking care of yourself in order to help those who needed you.”

“I do not believe ambitious men who say the only route to peace and prosperity lies in giving them more power—particularly when they do it with lands and people who are not theirs.”