Ascend

Ascend by Amanda Hocking

First off, I did not stay up last night and finish reading this book, I might have just devoted most of my day to it. Because I'm cool like that.

Inevitably, this will contain spoilers for the two books preceding this book in the series (Switch & Torn) so if you want to read those without any spoilers, I would strongly recommend not reading this post. Unless you want to know the series was worth it. It is for the record.

So in Ascend, it starts off with everyone floundering about what to do about the Vittra. Instead of attacking the Foren(I have no hope of spelling it right, we're calling it Foren), the kingdom in which Wendy resides with her cast of characters, the Vittra go after the changelings that are out in the world. So Wendy sends the trackers out to get them to come back or at least protect them. Then the Vittra get all sneaky and attack another Tyrelle colony because when they had made the deal in Torn, the treaty had specified they'd leave Foren alone. Not all of Tyrelle.

So the Vittra really suck. By the by.

So Wendy actually is pretty cool as she handles not only the queen being ill and Wendy taking over her responsibilities, but she also gets married to Tove. Then as she's struggling to figure out what to do about the Vittra, she tries to send out a rescue party to help the other Tyrelle colony, I think the name is Oscilina, somewhere in Northern Michigan. Anyways, the attacked colony, the rescue party happens upon the Vittra who attacked and try to overcome them but walk away with casualties and no victory. The chancellor dies (which is cool because he was awful) and so does a Markis (one of the Tyrelle nobility).

Again, all of this happens within the first quarter of the book. If anything can be said about this entire series is that it all moves at a great pace.

SPOILERS. Spoilers from here on out. Stop reading if you don't want spoilers please.

I don't like what happened to Wendy to get her to where she needed to be romantically. She marries Tove, but on the eve of her wedding night, Finn makes a move on her and she rejects him because she's always heartbroken. Finn is still over protective and jealous but becomes somewhat more reasonable to deal with. Then there's Tove who's gay, so when she married him, nothing happened. They shared maybe two kisses to which Wendy inadvertently went "ugh". One before the wedding ceremony after a snowball fight, and the other at the wedding ceremony. At the reception for the wedding though, Wendy dances with Loki and she knows she's in love with him.

So when they go to rescue the attacked colony, people come back injured, Wendy goes out and makes a deal with the Vittra to get them to back off, and when she was queen they could have her kingdom. She wanted to spare the lives of her people, reduce bloodshed, etc. Smart. She then tries to figure out a way to kill the leader since one of his gifts is 'immortality' and he's a horrible man. So when they finally manage to aid the attacked colony, Tove & Wendy use a lot of their abilities to help move rubble and generally clean up the city. Tove goes a bit crazy because he's used too much and he hits Wendy. Loki happens upon them and makes Tove go to sleep with his ability and they get Tove's mom (a healer) to stay with him just in case. Loki then whisks Wendy off and spends the night with her where she's all I LOVE YOU, they sex, etc. and Wendy basically tells him it can only be this one night.

So what I struggle with from all that is Wendy didn't feel guilty enough that she cheated on Tove. She knew she was entering a loveless, not intimate marriage, but I still feel like cheating is awful. She kind of had a few lines of, 'Oh how will I tell him?' but that's about it. When she does tell him he's all 'Wow, I should be jealous, but I'm totally not. Thanks for telling me.' Granted, he was already set to divorce her.

BUT STILL. Cheating isn't cool. Yep.

So all in all, I guess I liked how it felt a bit realistic despite dealing with Trolls and abilities and what not. But from the way Wendy acted, it felt realistic as in how a teenager would go about handling the situation. Kind of like a coming of age story of sorts. Although she started at 17 and we saw her probably until halfway through her 18th birth year.

There is a cool epilogue at the end of my copy which I appreciated (which normally I loathe since I think where the story stops should be where the story freaking stops. If you want to write more than make more book) since we find out about her life with Loki and what happened to everyone. I thought it was cute that they were like HELL NO to their kid being a changeling. And Matt stuck around which is cool. I like Matt, kind of.

All in all, it was a good read.