A review by merricatct
TRUEL1F3 by Jay Kristoff

4.0

Overall, I love the trilogy. This was my least favorite of the three, but it was still a great read! I loved so many of the characters - Lemon, Cricket, Abraham. My main complaint about the book was Eve - a redemption arc is fine, and I always appreciate a good one, but I wasn’t feeling it here. I LOVED that the author had her go bad and join the lifelikes in book 2, and she spent most of book 3 continuing to follow that path, and I was glad to see it! But then we got the 11th hour redemption, and it felt hollow and unearned. Like my son said “she was so evil and did so many horrible things, but she’s picking up recycling at the end, so I guess that’s a thing?” And as much as I love a redemption arc, I love an author being brave enough to write a good character fallen to evil and seeing it through to the end EVEN MORE.

Another issue - admittedly small, but as it happened right at the climax of the book, it really stuck out. Why didn’t Lemon’s power work on Gabriel? I can’t remember there being any previous hint that it wouldn’t, and it seems like the lifelikes have electricity as part of their makeup like everything else. Electricity certainly seemed to work on Eve while she was a prisoner of Daedalus. Sure, they’re “life LIKE”, as Gabriel said, but that doesn’t explain it. It was a really jarring sour note in an otherwise awesome crescendo.

Those aside, I enjoyed this a lot. Kristoff has yet to let me down!