zauren 's review for:

Three Shattered Souls by Mai Corland
2.75
Three Shattered Souls by Mai Corland is the final book in the Broken Blades Trilogy. It follows a large cast of characters fighting against multiple government systems. 

I will say, I liked this better the Four Ruined Realms (which was honestly a mess), but it doesn’t hold a flame to Five Broken Blades (which while far from perfect was so fun). I think this series (particularly this book) suffers from a few things. 
  1. The publisher. Red Tower Books is notorious for putting out rushed, sloppy books. There is no world in which this 439 page book should have been ready to come out 6-7 months after the previous book, which was about 430 pages. There is simply not enough time to write and edit a book properly that fast. Due to this practice, this will very likely be my last Red Tower book unless something changes and they start focusing on quality over quantity. 
  2. This book is so cringey. This probably won’t bother a lot of people, I just have no tolerance for it. Royo’s character never got the love he needed from the author to feel less like a caricature and more like a person. 
  3. The way the characters think makes no sense (could be tied back to the lack of editing time). Without giving spoilers, at one point one of the characters says “No one trusts [insert character name here] just because [they] betrayed us. That’s unfair…” like that’s exactly when you don’t trust someone…what????
  4. I don’t get the love for Sora. Like don’t get me wrong, I really like her as a character because she’s messy and complex, but EVERYONE around her thinks she’s morally perfect and pure and good. Have they met Sora?? 
  5. Without context (to avoid spoilers) these characters trust random CPR too much. CPR is just not that effective. 
  6. I think all the chapters being written in first person is a mistake. We often see things happening to the characters whose POV we are in, but it doesn’t make sense because they could FEEL these things, but often they wouldn’t be able to SEE them. 
  7. The writing is so choppy. Makes it a fast read, but it doesn’t flow. 
  8. The ending was so abrupt and I’m not sure why everyone just accepted it?? 


I did like that there were connections to the first book and events that happened to it this book, and the overall story line was enjoyable. I also liked the last chapter. I can see that Corland wants to write another series (or at least a companion novel). I would love to see her write this with a different publisher. One that might give her more feedback and do more edits with her. I doubt this will happen, but I would give her another chance if it did. Despite my many complaints, I really like her concepts. I just think she needs a better time to help her make them work.