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A review by lyakimov
The Golden Tower by Holly Black
3.0
I am pretty disappointed with this ending. It was left so open-ended and there were too many convenient fixes, like Callum walking through the gate again and cleansing his soul of all the million different evil warlords who had his soul previously. And also how everyone just randomly believed Alex was being controlled by Anastasia and just let him go. So....is Aaron just going to pretend to be Alex forever? He can never pretend to be himself? I did kind of like the last couple sentences because it showed that Aaron and Callum might be tilting into morally grey areas, obviously a little open-ended but that wasn't the problem I had with open-endedness. There was just stuff that was not really wrapped up at all. It was so rushed, within the last chapter, so many things happened. Also, why had we never heard of the golden gate before the last chapter? I don't know, maybe it was mentioned earlier but I didn't catch it.
There was little resolution on the fact that Callum has a ridiculously evil soul with 10000 evil warlords contaminating his memory, and suddenly after a chapter he is fine! We also really don't see him mastering his powers at all. He unlocks this new, huge power and then he immediately passes out. I feel like we should have gotten more development with him unlocking Constantine Madden's power. Callum and Tamara's relationship was so undeveloped and unnecessary. They could've stayed friends and absolutely nothing else would have been lost. Also, there was not enough Jasper! Every book, he has a new ridiculous hairstyle and aesthetic and I needed more of him.
I think that this series had such a promising plot but for some reason got lost in the middle books and led to things being super rushed and random. For example, in the third book, Aaron is killed by Alex, and then the fourth book has this huge plotline about raising Aaron from the dead. There was so much lost potential to this!! So you're telling me that Alex just killed Aaron and it wasn't for a specific purpose - he is Callum's best friend, and they want Constantine Madden's memories to come to the surface, so they purposely kill Aaron to trigger Callum into that kind of madness that Constantine had once his brother Jericho died. Nope, he just died. Why was this connection not made?? Things like this that could have enriched the series but plotlines are introduced so late into the story and resolved so quickly (especially in this book). Anyway, I am done complaining. This series was a good middle grade series with an interesting story but I just wanted more from it.
There was little resolution on the fact that Callum has a ridiculously evil soul with 10000 evil warlords contaminating his memory, and suddenly after a chapter he is fine! We also really don't see him mastering his powers at all. He unlocks this new, huge power and then he immediately passes out. I feel like we should have gotten more development with him unlocking Constantine Madden's power. Callum and Tamara's relationship was so undeveloped and unnecessary. They could've stayed friends and absolutely nothing else would have been lost. Also, there was not enough Jasper! Every book, he has a new ridiculous hairstyle and aesthetic and I needed more of him.
I think that this series had such a promising plot but for some reason got lost in the middle books and led to things being super rushed and random. For example, in the third book, Aaron is killed by Alex, and then the fourth book has this huge plotline about raising Aaron from the dead. There was so much lost potential to this!! So you're telling me that Alex just killed Aaron and it wasn't for a specific purpose - he is Callum's best friend, and they want Constantine Madden's memories to come to the surface, so they purposely kill Aaron to trigger Callum into that kind of madness that Constantine had once his brother Jericho died. Nope, he just died. Why was this connection not made?? Things like this that could have enriched the series but plotlines are introduced so late into the story and resolved so quickly (especially in this book). Anyway, I am done complaining. This series was a good middle grade series with an interesting story but I just wanted more from it.