A review by veronikahvee
Crimson Reign by Amélie Wen Zhao

adventurous emotional hopeful tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

Whew!! It's over my friends! I cannot believe this journey has finally reached its end. It's wild to think how I first heard of this book trilogy through a less fun series of events and it ended up becoming a most beloved story to me. I mean, I already knew I'd enjoy it just from the summary, but I didn't expect to end up having it up there with my all time faves.

As the rating of this and my opening paragraph clearly hint at: I loved this final book. It was a fantastic wrap-up of Ana's, Ramson's, Linn's and Kaïs' stories, both as individual stories as well as their overarching story.

The high stakes were always high, the dangers were real, the emotions were messy as it usually is with us humans and the big climax was *chef's kiss*.

I honestly think Amélie did an excellent job at ending her debut. She had a goal and it slowly unfolded before my eyes and it was great to be kept at the edge of the seat as I read her beautiful writing open more and more of what she had planned for us poor readers. The angst was off the charts, it was really angsty in the way you just go *insert meme of old man clutching his chest*, but it had a light at the end of the tunnel and I'm grateful for that (don't want angst if it's just suffering kay??). The most sensitive topics were well-handled as well, I could tell Amélie cared for these topics and wanted to write them well, but without sugar-coating anything.

Now for my more loose fangirl comments alskjdlasd this trilogy has filled the hole the grisha trilogy left in me. I'm serious, it's like Amélie knew all that I love about tgt, picked it and wrote something utterly satisfying without the things I was left wanting or disappointed with in tgt. I don't usually say this, but it's the final book and the final review, so I had to say it at some point, especially now that I reached the end haha. Also the main ship is... nikolina but endgame y'all *chef's kiss*!! oh one more thing, in spoilers in case you reading this review want to read tgt but don't want spoilers:
the blood heir trilogy handled the magic/powers and the loss of said powers in the way I wish tgt had handled. especially the loss! what it does to a wielder, how it affects their life! it was excellent, honestly. as well as the variety in powers, I loved that. ok, now I'm done haha alksdj


PS: got a new otp and it's called Ramsana!! WOOO

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