on
3.5/5
Non-Fiction
- Get link
- Other Apps
Rating: 4/5
Started: 26 December 2021
Finished: 28 December 2021
Summary:
Laia and Elias have escaped from Blackcliff, but the price was high. Elias was cut by his mother, the Commandant, with a poisoned blade to which there is no antidote. Despite the seizures and blackouts caused by the poison, Elias is determined to fulfill his promise to Laia and break Darin out of Kauf prison. But each time he blacks out, he is pulled to the Waiting Place, where souls go before they are ready to move on, and he doesn’t know how long he can hold out before he gives in.
Laia wants nothing more than to save her brother. But she knows what Kauf can do to a person, so even her greatest hope is tinged with fear. And as Elias pulls away from her and she becomes closer with Keenan, she begins to doubt even her own choices. It’s hard to be strong in a world with so much death.
Helene, newly appointed Blood Shrike, has been tasked with the one thing she doesn’t think she can do: Hunt down Elias and bring him back for execution. But she has no choice. If she doesn’t, her family will be killed. And so, while trying to figure out the plans of the Commandant, she must decide which is more important: Family born, or family made.
As the characters fight for hope, life, and freedom against sinister forces determined to break them, the one thing they need most is the thing they don’t have enough of: Time.
Thoughts:
This book was not as good as the first. I liked the Blackcliff setting of the first book a lot (I love a good boarding school setting) and it felt more sneaky and urgent than a march across the country. But it still was good. Laia and Elias’s relationship progressed really well, Helene got more badass, and I had completely forgotten abt Elias’s father being important.
The fact that I remembered most of the twists was really annoying though. The Keenan-being-the-Nightbringer one was the worst, and then also the Helene-not-knowing-that-Marcus-knew-the-Commandant’s-plan one. It was very frustrating, but oh well.
I’m starting book 3 tonight though, and am very excited, since I don’t remember that one quite as much.
Words:
Anathema (n) something that someone or something vehemently dislikes
Reave (v) carry out raids in order to destroy
Riven (ask) torn apart violently
Cordon (n) a line of police, soldiers, or officers around a place to prevent people from entering or exiting
Chivvies (v) tells someone repeatedly to do something
Crenellated (adj) (of a wall or building) having battlements