laenverse 's review for:

A Sky Beyond the Storm by Sabaa Tahir

4.5

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grew up listening to stories about jinns, but not the genie-will-grant-your-wishes kind. these jinns walk at night, can live in trees or mountains, and possess your body if you so much as look at their invisible forms the wrong way. great nightmare material for little children, really.

now, as an adult, i'm naturally curious about them. sabaa tahir does an amazing job bringing a lot of the old stories to life. nightbringer deserves this special mention because jinns have value and depth, and none more so than the nightbringer himself. he is supposed to be the villain in the series, and he is, but this story isn't as simple as good vs evil; his retribution makes sense. you can feel sorrow and empathy for meherya and his people, and it's easy to comprehend why his revenge is so important. let's be real, in any other book, the nightbringer would have been the perfect morally grey hero.

“It was never one. It was always three. The Blood Shrike is the first. Laia of Serra, the second. And the Soul Catcher is the last.”

helene: my girl, my pride. i adore her character development and how much she changed from the first book to the last. she's my number one favourite, hands down. but she deserved better 😭😭😭 it might be a bit spoilery to say that, but i will never get over what happened ok

her and harper were steady in their relationship until they weren't, and then it became a whirlwind of emotions. i wish we had gotten to know harper more, but seeing him through helene's eyes was enough. i rooted for this couple SO much. mainly because helene deserves nice things, and avitas harper is a nice thing.

“You are broken. But it is the broken things that are the sharpest. The deadliest. It is the broken things that are the most unexpected, and the most underestimated.”

laia: i loved her three years ago when i first read the series, but now i’m finding it difficult to connect with her—or really like her. the fact that rehmat tries to advise her and she doesn't listen??? i get that her trust was broken, but laia complicates things a lot, and most of her plans kind of suck tbh. i think while she's grown from the slave girl she once was, she hasn't grown as much as i wanted her to, if that makes sense. her ending, however, i was very happy with. after everything she's been through, laia found the life she wanted to live, but she also made sure she didn't forget the past.

laia and elias??? the romance was finally romancing!! i adored the angst and heartbreak, the slow burn romance. i didn't think much about them in the third book, but here, where we have memories and humanity and the race against time, this was done so well!! this was also the period i liked laia the most. her personality seems to shine when she's with elias—and maybe that's the point.

“I wish I could live a thousand lives so I could fall in love with you a thousand times,”

elias: this boy i liked but didn't love for the majority of the series. in the first book, i even went so far as to say i disliked him. however, as a soul catcher, he had his best moments. the way he fought with himself because of his memories, desperately trying to refuse them and then trying to understand them—it was pure heartbreak and i am here for it! i enjoyed watching him struggle and learn about himself again. out of everyone, his final arc was definitely the best. 

“Fearless. No, none of us is fearless. “Ill-fated” is a better description.”

this book was a whole other level of extra. it was filled to the max. the deeper you go into the story, the clearer the conclusions become. every chapter felt final. there are a few misgivings i have, and i honestly think we should have had one last pov from the nightbringer, but overall, i had a fantastic time finishing this series, and reading it with selena made it better.