Review by adancewithbooks - The Nightshade God

adancewithbooks 's review for:

The Nightshade God by Hannah Whitten

4.0

dark reflective slow-paced

Thank you to Orbit and Netgalley for the review copy in exchange for an honest review. This does not change my opinion in anyway.

'Maybe it can start fixing things,' he said. 'But I don't think that putting a fountain back together, even a magic one, is going to right every wrong in the world. People have to be involved in that particular evolution.'

The Nightshade God is the much awaited final to the Nightshade Crown trilogy that started with The Foxglove King. I was curious to see if this book could live up to the first book. The second book couldn't quite get there. Luckily this book worked a little better again.

We start this book a little while after the ending of book 2 where Lore has been taken captive, Bastian has been taken over by Apollius, Gabe and Malcolm were able to escape while Alli had to remain behind. These are the 4 point of views we follow throughout this story. It helped feeling that the story was moving forward because some point of views moved slow at certain stages, especially the start. I disliked reading Gabe's pieces the most mainly because he was not my favorite character to begin with and he was so angry in this book.

It is a hard read in places. The things that Lore has to go through and her new companion, Dani. Bastian who is drowning in a very large Apolius sea. Gabe's anger. It is not an easy book. I knew it wasn't going to be. There was never going to be an easy answer to this hole they moved themselves towards. It was hard in that to see lore's desperation to want to fix it all. Because as a side character has rightly said in the quote that I started this review with, you can't. Magic can't fix what it didn't break. Humans have to be apart of that. It luckily added a deepening to the plot that was simply fix the fountain and put all the magic back in and then the world is fixed. From the point of view of our characters. I'm glad there was a deepening there. I'm sure the ending will not completely satisfy a lot of readers because of that but I think it is more realistic this way. There was never going to be a super happy ending here. She says as she tries not to spoil a thing as she has many thoughts about that ending.

I think Alli became a new favorite character in this book. Some of the choices she made. She wanted so much to believe the good in others while still guarding herself. She grew throughout the book though and she made some hard decisions that I admire her for.

I do have one bone to pick with this book and that is regarding the romance. This went from a long triangle in the first book to a polyarmorous romance which I think was great. However I'm just a little sick of not actually getting to see the polyarmorous relationship on the page. We got Lore-Gabe, Lore-Bastian, Bastian-Gabe. But because of the plot and the happenings we never got all three of them truly together and I found that incredibly dissapointing.

The Nightshade Crown is a great trilogy to read overall and Hannah F. Whitten has now become even more an author who I keep an eye on.

Content Warnings