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Disquietus
, April 27, 2014
(view all comments by Disquietus)
This book has me so hyped up and excited that I actually had to make myself a cup of peppermint tea to calm myself enough to right this.
I have so. many. feelings. This was one of those books where I sat there the entire time internally yelling at myself “WHY DID YOU WAIT SO LONG TO READ THIS?” Of course the reason why was that I wasn’t particularly enamored by its predecessor and wasn’t expecting the sequel to be much better and so I just set aside and now I hate myself for it. I have never been happier to be so so wrong about something, and my love for this really makes me want to go back and read The Girl of Fire and Thorns again because I’m thinking I must have just been having a bad week or something when I read it.
Anyway. ALL OF THE FEELS. Most of them are centered around Elisa and Hector and their epic love of course. If these two don’t get a happy ending, especially after the ending of this book, I am going to be an ugly person to be around for a while. Watching them slowly acknowledge their love for each other, both to themselves and to each other, had me so moony eyed. It was beautiful. And I’m not ashamed to admit that I cried. Multiple times. Especially when Elisa was thinking about marrying him off. I just kept screaming NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO and then ugly crying. On the bus. Because I’m cool like that. I won’t even get into the ending because I have more feelings than I can contain until the final book comes out this summer.
Another favorite of this book was Elisa. I had a hard time with her and her lack of self-esteem in the first book, so it was refreshing to watch her come into her badass, deity chosen, royal self in this book. Of course she had her moments of frustrating naivety, especially when it came to how obviously Eduardo and the General were playing her, but watching her branch out on her own, especially in the last third of the book was some seriously fantastic character growth. The last few pages were definitely my favorite, especially when she dismissed a certain least favorite character of mine. Seriously though. I have to concede defeat and say that Elisa is a new favorite heroine of mine. She absolutely won me over in this book. It would have been easy for her to just succumb to all the pressure and get led around like a little puppy by the Quorum, or even to say screw it all and run off with Hector, but she refuses to take the easy route. She stands her ground, and fights against her feelings for Hector because she knows she has to do what’s best for her kingdom and not herself and I had to admire it, even while the shipper in me was screaming in agony every time she talked about making him marry someone else or refused to let him believe she returned his feelings.
Other character highlights included Mara being adorable and Belen redeeming himself in the best way, and I also really liked the Storm. And of course the little prince was adorable as always. I can’t even get into Tristan. I was leery of him at first, of course, but I love him so so much and I will be so upset if he doesn’t survive the next installment.
The writing was fantastic. It was good in the first book, but it just took on a life of its own with this installment. The pacing was perfect. The action never stopped and it fit perfectly with the turbulence of Elisa’s reign and her struggles to come into herself as ruler. SO MUCH HAPPENS. The action, political intrigue, danger and magic are non-stop and so intense. I was so immersed in the book that I almost missed my bus stop, and continued reading on the twenty minute walk home from the bus stop, which is basically like risking death for me because I’m likely to walk into oncoming traffic on a good day with no distractions, let alone when I’ve got my nose glued to a book.
Everyone just needs to read this series now so I have more people to flail with.
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