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jonnieraj 's review for:
The Golden Tower
by Holly Black
Spoilers ahead!
This book would be so much better in my opinion if the authors didn't make some of the weird decisions that they did. The main decision that was interested in at first but now HATE is the reveal of who's Call's soul really belongs to. Looking back on it that revelation had NO POINT except for having "shock value". First off, it was so out of the blue. To my knowledge there was no lead up or foreshadow. Plus, Call's soul once being Maugris basically meant nothing. Nothing came out of it or happened because of it. Hell no one even knows except for the main group. The only thing it did was make Call realize how to defeat a devoured of chaos. In my opinion it doesn't even make sense because no one had seen a devoured of chaos before hand and that was so heavily implied. This helped to foreshadow Alex's transformation and make it more impactful but now that just doesn't matter. Also, if it happened before how would people just forget? I know it was a long time ago but how would that not be a HUGE deal at the time. Plus the whole Maugris thing makes Constantine so much less important. They tried use it to explain why Constantine didn't bring Jericho back to life but it's the same reason Call and Alex tried on dead animals at first- so they wouldn't mess it up. It makes all the parallels between Call and Constantine also completely pointless. It did so little to the point that I have no idea why the authors decided to include it.
Another thing I had an issue with was the decision to bring Alex back in the end. I wanted Aaron to be alove because I loved his character but, Call bringing him back in Alex's body made no sense. The whole lesson he learned in the last book was that he shouldn't play with death and that it should be final. Plus Aaron had a complete 180. At the end of the last book he told Call that he was supposed to be dead and that Call was destined to be the hero not him. Aaron had literally come to acceptance with it. And then in this book in Call's head he just casually drops the bomb that he wants a body to come back to life for real. It just made no sense. And then at the end Rufus is like why do all my students try and play God? They respond basically by saying because they can and that everyone tests the limits of their magic. But other people test their limits by making air movies not raising the dead. Rufus pointed out they were arrogant to do what they did and then was like OK whatever. How can they have no repercussion for raising the dead?
Now onto the smaller things... what happened to the prophecy? Like that was such a big thing at first. And then we finally learned who was what: Call was already dead, Aaron was going to die, which means Tamara was supposed to fail. Like I don't know she might have failed at small things before but I didn't notice anything huge. Another small thing, why is there so much randomness in Jasper's love life and why do we keep having to hear about it. Him dating Celia was out of the blue but in this book I was like I guess they're gonna get back together now. But then he got with Gwenda for some reason??? There was no reason for that to happen at all. It was so pointless. I'm pretty sure no one reading this or anyone in the book cares about Jasper's love life. Why did they have him move on from Celia after complaining about it for SO LONG.
I did like the ending from the fight with Alex to the parallel to the ending of book one. The only thing in the ending that confused me was the weird sentence or two that said something seemed off about Aaron and that Call doubted him for a second. What was the point of that if this is the end of the series? Everything before that point was showing that Aaron was weirdly himself and didn't care that he was in the body of the man who murdered him. It seems like this book series was supposed to be continued which would explain the weird Aaron doubt and the last minute reveal about Call's soul. The thing is the from what I looked up the authors have no intention of continuing the story at the moment. Why would you purposely leave such an open ending and have no plans or desires to continue it? In the end there was also no moral to the story or lesson which I thought was supposed to be pretty important especially in kids books to teach them. The only lesson I saw was "Don't play god and think about whether you should do something before doing it". But this lesson does not go with what happened at all because they played god and it completely worked out with no repercussions. You could say Aaron being stuck in Alex's body (the dude who straight up murdered him) is a punishment enough. I may have agreed with this if it seemed like any of the others cared about that in the slightest.
My main disappointment with this end is the fact that it doesn't seem like it should be the end considering all of the loose ends. I did enjoy this series and it certainly had some really interesting ideas but there were just so many weird writing decisions in it. It's disappointing because this series as a whole could have been so much better so easily.
Also what did they do to my boy and the number one father, Allastair?? Why did they have to hurt me so?
This book would be so much better in my opinion if the authors didn't make some of the weird decisions that they did. The main decision that was interested in at first but now HATE is the reveal of who's Call's soul really belongs to. Looking back on it that revelation had NO POINT except for having "shock value". First off, it was so out of the blue. To my knowledge there was no lead up or foreshadow. Plus, Call's soul once being Maugris basically meant nothing. Nothing came out of it or happened because of it. Hell no one even knows except for the main group. The only thing it did was make Call realize how to defeat a devoured of chaos. In my opinion it doesn't even make sense because no one had seen a devoured of chaos before hand and that was so heavily implied. This helped to foreshadow Alex's transformation and make it more impactful but now that just doesn't matter. Also, if it happened before how would people just forget? I know it was a long time ago but how would that not be a HUGE deal at the time. Plus the whole Maugris thing makes Constantine so much less important. They tried use it to explain why Constantine didn't bring Jericho back to life but it's the same reason Call and Alex tried on dead animals at first- so they wouldn't mess it up. It makes all the parallels between Call and Constantine also completely pointless. It did so little to the point that I have no idea why the authors decided to include it.
Another thing I had an issue with was the decision to bring Alex back in the end. I wanted Aaron to be alove because I loved his character but, Call bringing him back in Alex's body made no sense. The whole lesson he learned in the last book was that he shouldn't play with death and that it should be final. Plus Aaron had a complete 180. At the end of the last book he told Call that he was supposed to be dead and that Call was destined to be the hero not him. Aaron had literally come to acceptance with it. And then in this book in Call's head he just casually drops the bomb that he wants a body to come back to life for real. It just made no sense. And then at the end Rufus is like why do all my students try and play God? They respond basically by saying because they can and that everyone tests the limits of their magic. But other people test their limits by making air movies not raising the dead. Rufus pointed out they were arrogant to do what they did and then was like OK whatever. How can they have no repercussion for raising the dead?
Now onto the smaller things... what happened to the prophecy? Like that was such a big thing at first. And then we finally learned who was what: Call was already dead, Aaron was going to die, which means Tamara was supposed to fail. Like I don't know she might have failed at small things before but I didn't notice anything huge. Another small thing, why is there so much randomness in Jasper's love life and why do we keep having to hear about it. Him dating Celia was out of the blue but in this book I was like I guess they're gonna get back together now. But then he got with Gwenda for some reason??? There was no reason for that to happen at all. It was so pointless. I'm pretty sure no one reading this or anyone in the book cares about Jasper's love life. Why did they have him move on from Celia after complaining about it for SO LONG.
I did like the ending from the fight with Alex to the parallel to the ending of book one. The only thing in the ending that confused me was the weird sentence or two that said something seemed off about Aaron and that Call doubted him for a second. What was the point of that if this is the end of the series? Everything before that point was showing that Aaron was weirdly himself and didn't care that he was in the body of the man who murdered him. It seems like this book series was supposed to be continued which would explain the weird Aaron doubt and the last minute reveal about Call's soul. The thing is the from what I looked up the authors have no intention of continuing the story at the moment. Why would you purposely leave such an open ending and have no plans or desires to continue it? In the end there was also no moral to the story or lesson which I thought was supposed to be pretty important especially in kids books to teach them. The only lesson I saw was "Don't play god and think about whether you should do something before doing it". But this lesson does not go with what happened at all because they played god and it completely worked out with no repercussions. You could say Aaron being stuck in Alex's body (the dude who straight up murdered him) is a punishment enough. I may have agreed with this if it seemed like any of the others cared about that in the slightest.
My main disappointment with this end is the fact that it doesn't seem like it should be the end considering all of the loose ends. I did enjoy this series and it certainly had some really interesting ideas but there were just so many weird writing decisions in it. It's disappointing because this series as a whole could have been so much better so easily.
Also what did they do to my boy and the number one father, Allastair?? Why did they have to hurt me so?