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A review by ametakinetos
Gilded Serpent by Danielle L. Jensen
3.0
Yes. And no.
Dark Shores was a great ride and Dark Skies even better. I was apprehensive coming into Gilded Serpent with its higher POV count and a now concurrent storyline, and overall I think Jensen accomplished this task well. It is no small feat to maintain four distinct voices especially as they experience the same events.
But for those voices to remain original in their own right is another matter. Lydia makes the greatest strides as a character (villain arc! villain arc! I'm BEGGING), whereas Killian seems to just retrace the same mental steps over and over. The worst offenders of this are Teriana and Marcus. They end the book in physically and mentally the exact same place they started and seem to have learned nothing through their adventures together.
Plotwise, little is accomplished. The tension is ever-present and the action is breakneck, yet the only revelation of note are the xenthier stems and perhaps Lydia's heritage. Serrick devolving into the corrupted or Rufina's reveal as Cyntha didn't move the needle for me. Evil characters already established as evil, just taking a different form, is not all that revolutionary.
All in all, the worldbuilding is extraordinary, it's an easy read, but I feel that this third installment is merely dragging out the series to keep it from being a trilogy. It didn't have enough to make the length feel warranted. Still, I look forward to Scorched Earth which should, by definition of being the last book, escape the doldrums of plot bloating that Gilded Serpents found itself caught in.
Dark Shores was a great ride and Dark Skies even better. I was apprehensive coming into Gilded Serpent with its higher POV count and a now concurrent storyline, and overall I think Jensen accomplished this task well. It is no small feat to maintain four distinct voices especially as they experience the same events.
But for those voices to remain original in their own right is another matter. Lydia makes the greatest strides as a character (villain arc! villain arc! I'm BEGGING), whereas Killian seems to just retrace the same mental steps over and over. The worst offenders of this are Teriana and Marcus. They end the book in physically and mentally the exact same place they started and seem to have learned nothing through their adventures together.
Plotwise, little is accomplished. The tension is ever-present and the action is breakneck, yet the only revelation of note are the xenthier stems and perhaps Lydia's heritage. Serrick devolving into the corrupted or Rufina's reveal as Cyntha didn't move the needle for me. Evil characters already established as evil, just taking a different form, is not all that revolutionary.
All in all, the worldbuilding is extraordinary, it's an easy read, but I feel that this third installment is merely dragging out the series to keep it from being a trilogy. It didn't have enough to make the length feel warranted. Still, I look forward to Scorched Earth which should, by definition of being the last book, escape the doldrums of plot bloating that Gilded Serpents found itself caught in.