The Shadowglass by Rin Chupeco

The Bone Witch #3

Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire

Publication Date: March 5th, 2019

Rating: 5 Stars

Source: Emma @ Miss Print

Format: ARC

Pages: 449

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Summary (from Goodreads):

In the highly anticipated finale to the Bone Witch trilogy, Tea’s life—and the fate of the kingdoms—hangs in the balance.

Tea is a bone witch with the dark magic needed to raise the dead. She has used this magic to breathe life into those she has loved and lost…and those who would join her army against the deceitful royals. But Tea's quest to conjure a shadowglass—to achieve immortality for the one person she loves most in the world—threatens to consume her heart.

Tea's black heartsglass only grows darker with each new betrayal. And when she is left with new blood on her hands, Tea must answer to a power greater than the elder asha or even her conscience...

The Shadowglass by Rin Chupeco was easily my most anticipated book of 2019 (which I think says a lot considering there was already an Alexandra Bracken release this year). I adore this series with my whole heart and this finale absolutely lived up to the hype I made for it.

This book is told in the dual timeline format again with the bard in the present and then Tea's story leading up to how he found her on the Sea of Skulls. In the bard's perspective, Tea has just finished up her business in Daanoris and is leading her army of daeva toward Drycht to finish what she started. She won't take him along because of the danger to him so she gives him a stack of letters to complete her story.

In her story they are learning more about the blight that is causing people to turn into daeva-like creatures and trying to figure out what secrets the elder asha are hiding regarding the Dark asha and what they can actually do.

This book was a RIDE, let me tell you. This book has everything. There's betrayal, there's an air of mystery, there is crushing heartbreak. There are wonderful friendships and wonderful romances.

I literally just want to reread this series over and over and over. I loved it so much. If The Heart Forger hadn't landed Rin Chupeco on my auto-buy author list, this book would have definitely cemented her spot.

I love all of the characters in this series. Tea and Kalen. Fox and Inessa. Likh and Khalad. Shadi and Zoya.

I love Tea and Kalen's relationship. They are kind of enemies-to-lovers. They are like... fictional couple goals, in my opinion. Like, they have their disagreements, things aren't always wonderful for them, but there isn't like a big fight or some other circumstance that separates them in the book at any point, which is something I like. I hate when couples have big misunderstandings that are blown out of proportions or are separated for huge chunks of the book. I love me a power couple that can work through their problems and still adore each other through it all.

Like I believe I mentioned in my review for The Heart Forger, there is the f/f pairing of Shadi and Zoya (who I don't recall being a huge part of this particular book, it has been a few days since I finished this book because I just needed to bask in its gloriousness).

I believe I mentioned in that last review also that there was the m/m pairing of Likh and Khalad, but that is not correct. In this book, Likh gets to finally become a full fledged asha apprentice and is frequently called Lady Likh, she always corrects people when they say that. But in this book Tea reads in Likh's heartsglass that she would like to be Lady Likh and from that point on Likh is referred to as she/Lady Likh and there are no more corrections or anything like that.

Anyway, I love Likh and Khalad, they are/were both so clueless about how the other felt about them. I don't remember at what point in the series they finally got their act together and realized how the other felt because I binged this whole series over the course of several snow days and I don't know where one book ends and the other begins at this point.

I could sit here and gush about this book and its characters for DAYS, but I think you should just go read the series for yourself and then come flail with me!

For real, I have been WAITING for the resolution to this series since I started the first book! I finally have all the answers to my questions I had since the beginning! WHO is in the grave on the Sea of Skulls and WHAT happened to them?

This series has definitely made my top three favorite series ever. If you like necromancy and squad goals, you will probably like this book too.

Have you read this series yet? What did you think of it?

Review // The Last Life of Prince Alastor by Alexandra Bracken

The Last Life of Prince Alastor by Alexandra Bracken

The Dreadful Tale of Prosper Redding #2

Publisher: Disney-Hyperion

Publication Date: February 5th, 2019

Rating: 4 Stars

Source: Gift from Emma

Format: ARC

Pages: 448

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Summary (from Goodreads):

Three hundred years ago, fate bound Prosper Redding and Prince Alastor of the Third Realm together. Now the human boy and fiend heir to the demon kingdom must put aside a centuries-old blood feud to save everything they love. 

Alastor will guide Prosper through the demon realm—under one huge condition: Prosper must enter into a contract with the malefactor residing in him, promising eternal servitude in the afterlife. With Prosper's sister in the clutches of the evil queen Pyra, Prosper has no choice but to agree. 

But when they arrive in Alastor's deliciously demonic home, the realm is almost as alien to Alastor as it is to Prosper—the lowest fiends have dethroned the ruling malefactors, while an unfathomable force called the Void is swiftly consuming the realm. The desperate fiends cling to the one person who says she can stop it: Pyra. 

As Prosper embarks on a perilous rescue mission to the Tower of No Return, he can't help but feel for the demons losing their home—even Alastor, who lives by a set of rules that have vanished in a new world. 

With the fates of humans and demons at odds, the battle lines are drawn. Long ago, Prosper's ancestor Honor Redding proved that humans and demons could never be friends. But is Prosper like his ancestor? And is Alastor the same demon who was betrayed by the one human he cared for?

The Last Life of Prince Alastor picks up right where The Dreadful Tale of Prosper Redding left off. Prosper has just created a contract with Alastor so that Alastor will help him navigate through the Third Realm to save his sister. But things in the Third Realm are very different under Alastor's sister's rule than they were when he was last there. The lowest caste of fiends have more power and there is a void swallowing up everything in sight because of an overuse of magic.

So, it has been a hot minute since I finished this book and this is just the first moment that I am feeling particularly inspired to write a review for it. So, sorry that this review might not be particularly in depth.

This middle grade series is so much fun! When Halloween time rolls around, this will be a series you want to read. A duology about a boy who is possessed by a fiend (or rather a demon) and who spends the first book living mostly in a haunted house in Salem and who's best friend is a witch? Just perfect for September/October.

This book has a slightly different format than the first one. In this book, it jumps back to Alastor's POV in the past on a few occasions to show us how this whole mess started with Alastor and Honor. I found this to be super interesting to see how the contracts they made kind of evolved from being things that Honor wanted to help his people to things that basically screwed over other people.

I loved exploring the Third Realm in this book and learning how things work down there and learning more about different Realms and how they were kind of created and what not.

I did feel like this book had some relatively dark things in it for a middle grade. I will say that I have not read extensively in middle grade so I don't really know what is and isn't stuff that you would normally see in one. However, at one point I do remember seeing Alex talk about how she had to call the demons something else to make it more kid friendly, so that is why I feel like the two things that I am thinking of are kind of dark for a middle grade.

The first thing I am thinking of deals with the changelings. You may recall that after a certain point in the first book, no one has seen Toad or Eleanor for awhile. We run into them again in the Third Realm in a marketplace being sold with a handful of other changelings for meat. So, Prosper has to take a bit of a detour from finding Prue to save the changelings. But when they finally make it to the house where the changelings are to be served, they aren't able to save them all and I believe it was implied that they were already cooked and served.

Which, like.. cooking and eating meat isn't something particularly taboo or anything, but changelings are basically like implied to be pets and the fact that some of them didn't make it feels dark to me for a middle grade.

The other instance that I am thinking of happens more shortly after they arrive in the Third Realm. Prosper gets picked up along with some vampires and they are on their way to basically an execution. When Pyra came into power, she took power away from the fiends who had always had it and gave it to the ones who didn't. And you don't see any of the types of fiends that Alastor was accustomed to seeing out and about and it seemed to me to be that they were basically exterminated because they wouldn't apologize for how they behaved before in keeping the lower fiends down.

So, like.. all in all, not bad for a book that I would normally read, but like I said, it just felt dark for a middle grade. Maybe I'm wrong, but I guess I just wasn't expecting content like that??

I also thoroughly enjoyed the relationship between Alastor and Prosper. I love Alastor's character and all of his hilarious insults. I liked Pyra, like she's bad and whatever, but I like that she gave power to the underdogs and was doing everything in her power to save her people. I also liked seeing a different side to Prosper's "evil" grandmother.

Overall, I just really liked this book. It was fun and a great sequel. I can't think of anything that I personally would complain about, but I feel like the two "dark" things I mentioned above may be things to keep in mind?

I love Alexandra Bracken's work and I can't wait to see what she comes out with next!

Have you read this series yet? What did you think of it?