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A review by libralita
Gathering Darkness by Morgan Rhodes
5.0
TBR Jar Challenge: Listen to an audiobook
Review:
So our story begins with the fire from the last book still raging on, there’s this watcher who claims to be a god that a couple of Limerian guards come across. He then kicks their asses.
Back to Jonas, he continues to suck as a rebel leader then this guy named Felix comes and helps him fight off some guards.
We get our first look at Asher’s twin sister Amara. Who seems more evil than her brother or at least it’s more obvious. Lucia and Cleo are kind of teaming up together to fight off Amara. Magnus on the other hand isn’t so lucky. He seems pretty easily seduced by her.
Back with Alexius we find out that Melenia is manipulating King Gaius and that she’s also sucking all the other Watchers for their magic.
In Limeros, Gauis ends up killing Lys’s brother and that kind of breaks her.
Magnus starts finally standing up to his father, maybe even planning on killing him but then Gauis reveals that Sabina was his real mother and not Althea. So that plan’s out the window. So I guess it wasn’t Aron who killed Magnus’s mother, it was Lucia.
“Wrapped around his little finger? Pretty net? What exactly did Amara think she knew?
Nic was not wrapped around anyone’s little finger. Except Cleo’s perhaps, and that was entirely his choice. Cleo was family—the only family he had left.” —Page 154-155
Nic is so cute. So Nic starts to kind of form a bond with the siblings. Which is a very bad idea.
Jonas and Felix work with Nic to help Lys and Tarus escape the king killing them. They devise a plan to create an explosion to stop the ceremony. They escape but Lucia ends up getting lost in a crowd, she meets up with Amara and they find Petros (the boy who started the explosion) and Amara ends up killing him like the bitch that she is.
Later, Magnus being the angst-y brooder that he is gets drunk and Cronus has to take him back to the palace. On their way back he sees a temple for Cleiona being guarded by guards. He discovers that Cleo is in there praying and confronts her. They talk for a while and Cleo almost gets through to him before he reminds her of him killing Theon. Then Magnus fucks Amara because of course he does.
“But it seems that you’re experiencing a flurry of angst today.”—Nic, Page 219
Every YA character, ever.
So back to the whole Kindred story line, Alexius creates a magic map and with the help of Cleo’s ring they find the locations to ¾ of the crystals. Cleo feeds this information back to Jonas and he and set out to find them. Now I thought that touching the crystals would end up turning you mad but it doesn’t seem like it.
Back at the palace, Lucia is paranoid that Cleo betrayed her, so she sets a trap for and realizes that Cleo is lying to her. She nearly kills Cleo before letting her go back she realizes that her magic is incredibly dark. Cleo escapes Lucia but then is taken by the Limeros guards by the King’s orders. Things never go right for Cleo, do they?
And Alexius and Lucia just had sex and now they’re gonna get married.
So Gauis orders Magnus to question Cleo, but that’s kind of useless because he gives Cronus the order to just kill her after the question. However Magnus decides last minute to kill Cronus and another guard. He saves Cleo and they head for Limeros to find Lucia.
Nic overhears that the king is going to send guards after Amara and Ashur so he dash off to warn them. Turns out that they were just using him for information. Because of course they were.
Cleo and Magnus make it to Limeros stay at a noble woman’s house, say that they hate each other and then make out. But before things go any further Amara and Ashur show up with Nic and few guards. They demand that they take them to where the water crystal is or they’ll kill Nic. So they do.
Back at Paelsia, the Rebel trio only managed to get the earth and air crystals but the fire crystal is mysteriously missing. However Nerissa tells Jonas that Felix was an assassin for the king. Jonas tells Lys this, he’s about to go confront Felix but then Felix explains that he changed and is pretty hurt that Jonas wouldn’t even ask Felix to explain. He would have just killed him. Felix takes the air crystal that he got with his blood and then leaves.
At the Valoria temple Alexius stabs Lucia and then stabs himself. In his last dying moments he tells Lucia some important information.
Later Magnus, Cleo, Amara and Ashur arrive at the temple. They try to summon the water crystal but it’s revealed that Nic actually gotten there first with the help of Ashur. Then Amara like the bitch she is destroyed my Nic/Ashur ship and killed Ashur. I’m so sad, I shipped them so hard!
Amara leaves with the water crystal, Nic is grieving (like I am), Cleo and Magnus manage to kill all the guards before the guards can kill them. They’re now going to go after Amara so they can get the water crystal.
“Magnus had come to a horrible realization. One he knew would cause him nothing but pain and suffering from that day forward.
But there was not changing the truth of it.
He had fallen in love with her.”—Page 397
Well at least one ship is still going strong.
Final chapter, Melenia is now in Mytica but is still immortal. This is where things get kind of confusing. I guess Lucia summoned Melenia’s old lover the fire god. But then the fire god is like “I don’t love you anymore” and the Lucia kills Melenia. Then the fire god asks Lucia to help him release him, destroy the watchers and the entire world. Lucia agrees and now the world is going to burn.
And that was the third Falling Kingdoms book. It took me such a long time to read it but dammit it was so good. I can’t wait to get the first Spirit and Thieves book along with the next book in the Falling Kingdoms series. This was such a great ending. I loved it so much.
Review:
So our story begins with the fire from the last book still raging on, there’s this watcher who claims to be a god that a couple of Limerian guards come across. He then kicks their asses.
Back to Jonas, he continues to suck as a rebel leader then this guy named Felix comes and helps him fight off some guards.
We get our first look at Asher’s twin sister Amara. Who seems more evil than her brother or at least it’s more obvious. Lucia and Cleo are kind of teaming up together to fight off Amara. Magnus on the other hand isn’t so lucky. He seems pretty easily seduced by her.
Back with Alexius we find out that Melenia is manipulating King Gaius and that she’s also sucking all the other Watchers for their magic.
In Limeros, Gauis ends up killing Lys’s brother and that kind of breaks her.
Magnus starts finally standing up to his father, maybe even planning on killing him but then Gauis reveals that Sabina was his real mother and not Althea. So that plan’s out the window. So I guess it wasn’t Aron who killed Magnus’s mother, it was Lucia.
“Wrapped around his little finger? Pretty net? What exactly did Amara think she knew?
Nic was not wrapped around anyone’s little finger. Except Cleo’s perhaps, and that was entirely his choice. Cleo was family—the only family he had left.” —Page 154-155
Nic is so cute. So Nic starts to kind of form a bond with the siblings. Which is a very bad idea.
Jonas and Felix work with Nic to help Lys and Tarus escape the king killing them. They devise a plan to create an explosion to stop the ceremony. They escape but Lucia ends up getting lost in a crowd, she meets up with Amara and they find Petros (the boy who started the explosion) and Amara ends up killing him like the bitch that she is.
Later, Magnus being the angst-y brooder that he is gets drunk and Cronus has to take him back to the palace. On their way back he sees a temple for Cleiona being guarded by guards. He discovers that Cleo is in there praying and confronts her. They talk for a while and Cleo almost gets through to him before he reminds her of him killing Theon. Then Magnus fucks Amara because of course he does.
“But it seems that you’re experiencing a flurry of angst today.”—Nic, Page 219
Every YA character, ever.
So back to the whole Kindred story line, Alexius creates a magic map and with the help of Cleo’s ring they find the locations to ¾ of the crystals. Cleo feeds this information back to Jonas and he and set out to find them. Now I thought that touching the crystals would end up turning you mad but it doesn’t seem like it.
Back at the palace, Lucia is paranoid that Cleo betrayed her, so she sets a trap for and realizes that Cleo is lying to her. She nearly kills Cleo before letting her go back she realizes that her magic is incredibly dark. Cleo escapes Lucia but then is taken by the Limeros guards by the King’s orders. Things never go right for Cleo, do they?
And Alexius and Lucia just had sex and now they’re gonna get married.
So Gauis orders Magnus to question Cleo, but that’s kind of useless because he gives Cronus the order to just kill her after the question. However Magnus decides last minute to kill Cronus and another guard. He saves Cleo and they head for Limeros to find Lucia.
Nic overhears that the king is going to send guards after Amara and Ashur so he dash off to warn them. Turns out that they were just using him for information. Because of course they were.
Cleo and Magnus make it to Limeros stay at a noble woman’s house, say that they hate each other and then make out. But before things go any further Amara and Ashur show up with Nic and few guards. They demand that they take them to where the water crystal is or they’ll kill Nic. So they do.
Back at Paelsia, the Rebel trio only managed to get the earth and air crystals but the fire crystal is mysteriously missing. However Nerissa tells Jonas that Felix was an assassin for the king. Jonas tells Lys this, he’s about to go confront Felix but then Felix explains that he changed and is pretty hurt that Jonas wouldn’t even ask Felix to explain. He would have just killed him. Felix takes the air crystal that he got with his blood and then leaves.
At the Valoria temple Alexius stabs Lucia and then stabs himself. In his last dying moments he tells Lucia some important information.
Later Magnus, Cleo, Amara and Ashur arrive at the temple. They try to summon the water crystal but it’s revealed that Nic actually gotten there first with the help of Ashur. Then Amara like the bitch she is destroyed my Nic/Ashur ship and killed Ashur. I’m so sad, I shipped them so hard!
Amara leaves with the water crystal, Nic is grieving (like I am), Cleo and Magnus manage to kill all the guards before the guards can kill them. They’re now going to go after Amara so they can get the water crystal.
“Magnus had come to a horrible realization. One he knew would cause him nothing but pain and suffering from that day forward.
But there was not changing the truth of it.
He had fallen in love with her.”—Page 397
Well at least one ship is still going strong.
Final chapter, Melenia is now in Mytica but is still immortal. This is where things get kind of confusing. I guess Lucia summoned Melenia’s old lover the fire god. But then the fire god is like “I don’t love you anymore” and the Lucia kills Melenia. Then the fire god asks Lucia to help him release him, destroy the watchers and the entire world. Lucia agrees and now the world is going to burn.
And that was the third Falling Kingdoms book. It took me such a long time to read it but dammit it was so good. I can’t wait to get the first Spirit and Thieves book along with the next book in the Falling Kingdoms series. This was such a great ending. I loved it so much.