A review by lostintomes
Into the Bright Unknown by Rae Carson

3.0

I am not entirely sure what I expected going into this but I know a revenge/heist plot was NOT it. I was intrigued at first by this sudden plot change however the more I read, the more disappointed I was. The first mistake was that we have a new (less interesting) villain in this one. Uncle Hiram was so hate-able! And while James Hardwick is still a bad guy, he’s just not as compelling. A heist story needs a strong, despicable villain that everyone can hate. Hardwick just didn't do it for me. It felt like a step down when we should have gone up.

Lee’s powers really are not really used to their advantage in this either.

Spoiler

Yes it is nice that we get to meet another person with powers and a small back story with her mom… but it doesn’t feel very substantial and I still had a lot of questions left unanswered.

I felt like they took a backseat to the story, and we focused more on the problems of California during this era. It felt really preachy and dragged on and on. I think it was obvious to any reader that the issues they faced were unjust and we didn’t need to be hit over the head with it to understand the point. It was a wasted opportunity if you ask me. I mean a girl with gold hunting powers goes to California to find gold and start a new life and instead

Spoiler

of doing that… they steal it?! REALLY?! Why do we not get any honest-to-goodness gold hunting in this? I was looking forward to some more of that.

Overall I didn’t feel a connection to this story or to their motivation for their revenge. As a heist book it really falls flat. We don’t get to experience any of the planning or the action sequences. Most of the time we are “distracting” people while things happen behind the scenes. When we get to the end there’s a big summary of what really was going on during the book and it feels like a letdown. It’s normal for the reader to be kept in the dark for part of the heist but usually not blind to practically the entire thing. Why didn’t we get to experience any of that? I was missing the emotional tie to the characters that we had in the first two as well. There wasn’t anything to pull me in and keep my interest. Thank goodness for the amazing audio narrator because otherwise I would never have finished this on my own.

The ending is happy but not very satisfying.

Spoiler

Did we really have to have everyone paired up at the end?! Like really…? It happens quickly and to people we don’t really care about. And we don’t even get to see the whole wedding!

I wanted an epilogue! I was hoping to see Lee settle, find answers to questions from her past and a little glimpse into what happens to the town in the future. I guess I’ll never know, I didn’t HATE this at all, but it’s just okay. I think it would have been better to just leave this as a duology and stopped at book 2 since that ending felt more satisfying to me.