This is the third and final book in a trilogy. The first book, Ash Princess, I reviewed HERE, and the second book, Lady Smoke, I reviewed HERE. If you don't want anything spoiled for the previous two books, then I strongly recommend not reading this review.
An amazon summary, "Princess Theodosia was a prisoner in her own country for a decade. Renamed the Ash Princess, she endured relentless abuse and ridicule from the Kaiser and his court. But though she wore a crown of ashes, there is fire in Theo's blood. As the rightful heir to the Astrean crown, it runs in her veins. And if she learned nothing else from her mother, she learned that a Queen never cowers.
Now free, with a misfit army of rebels to back her, Theo must liberate her enslaved people and face a terrifying new enemy: the new Kaiserin. Imbued with a magic no one understands, the Kaiserin is determined to burn down anyone and everything in her way.
The Kaiserin's strange power is growing stronger, and with Prinz Søren as her hostage, there is more at stake than ever. Theo must learn to embrace her own power if she has any hope of standing against the girl she once called her heart's sister." AMAZON LINK OF JUSTICE
This book is the third and final book, and as such, was just kind of full of a lot of emotional conflict being resolved and a lot of action. I don't think I'm going to do a summary as I have some thoughts. I also get pretty upset about themes of self sacrifice. Like, 'For the good of the (insert world, country, certain character, etc) I must die.' Or the classic, 'I'm going to die anyways, may as well be for a cause I believe in.' It just, makes me very mad when people lose the will to find anything good about their life. HOWEVER, there is the alternate self sacrifice, of say Spock in Star Trek, where he literally chooses to sacrifice himself before anyone else can make that choice. I'm more okay with that because anyone could have done what Spock did, he was just the first one to it.
Anyways.
I also feel like a lot of the magical elements of the book went largely unexplained, or explained with a one sentence throwaway line where everyone just accepted the rationale behind it. The story ultimately didn't really express anything new, just common themes from what we've seen in other books (love triangle, final battles, triumph and loss, etc). I did kind of enjoy reading the books, but I also felt like I was waiting for something more the entire time. The pacing was incredibly slow.
The final resolution also felt kind of forced and pre-concluded? Like, of course this is how the book would end, why wouldn't it have the kind of fairy tale ending where everything just kind of sorts itself out and Theo has finally managed to have some sort of confidence to take on the throne.
I know this isn't a typical review, but these are atypical times, and this is what I've got. After reading the third book, the overall series deadpans at "meh" status. The first book was interesting because of the whole Ash Princess aspect, but also because REBELLION, fighting for the people, YAH! Then book two was like..... alright..... still rebelling! Magic! And book three felt like, yep, we are definitely rebelling. It's just working out a little differently than expected! By the way, MAGIC.
[Slight spoiler] There was also an element of Theo and Cressida existing in each other's psyche? But... they didn't really do anything interesting with that either. There was no reconciling between the characters or trying to understand their motivations. It's like everyone was determined to march in their parent's footsteps rather than build something they could invest in. Cressida kind of did? But.... not really.
Happy reading!
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