Friday, April 18, 2014

Review: The Forever Song by Julie Kagawa

The Forever Song

Author: Julie Kagawa
Release: April 15th 2014
Genre: Post-Apocalypse, Supernatural, Vampires, YA
#3 in the Blood of Eden trilogy
Series: The Immortal Rules (#1), The Eternity Cure (#2)

Plot:

VENGEANCE WILL BE HERS 

Allison Sekemoto once struggled with the question: human or monster? 

With the death of her love, Zeke, she has her answer. 

MONSTER 

Allie will embrace her cold vampire side to hunt down and end Sarren, the psychopathic vampire who murdered Zeke. But the trail is bloody and long, and Sarren has left many surprises for Allie and her companions—her creator, Kanin, and her blood brother, Jackal. The trail is leading straight to the one place they must protect at any cost—the last vampire-free zone on Earth, Eden. And Sarren has one final, brutal shock in store for Allie. 

In a ruined world where no life is sacred and former allies can turn on you in one heartbeat, Allie will face her darkest days. And if she succeeds, triumph is short-lived in the face of surviving forever alone.

Review:

(Warning: mild spoilers)
I'll be honest with you here. I'm a little underwhelmed by this. Part of me wants to be the good puppy and still give 5 stars, because, come on, this is Julie Kagawa. This is Blood of Eden. But ... then again, it's really not 5 stars. Truly, it isn't.

Now, the first thing that you have to realize about this final installment: It's repetitive. Like, really unbearably repetitive. It's literally always the same hacking through enemies, slicing and dicing, cutting them in half, with lots of blood and gore etc. That's what makes about ... 70% of the book. The other 30% consist of the same conversations over and over again, about how a vampire can "choose" to be a monster, and of course relationship drama between Zeke and Allie, which, honestly, got really annoying after not too long.

Then, speaking of Zeke, there is the whole Zeke matter of itself. Because while I appreciate Zeke being back in the picture again and not actually being dead, because I do like the dude when he's not being butthurt and mopey, I still think that doing this is extremely fishy and stupid. By "this" I mean killing a character off, just to be able to say later on "Woops lol nope, just kidding! They're actually still alive." I saw this coming from a mile away, but I guess I still was hoping Kagawa wouldn't jump on that train and do it. Yet again.

Which reminds me — this novel almost felt like she completely recycled her Iron Fey series. The other two books were fine, they were awesome, but with this last book, I'm left wondering ... What the hell? I mean, I'm traipsing precariously around spoiler territory here, but what Zeke does when he first appears and what he goes through after, realizing his deeds is exactly like what Ash went through in The Iron Daughter. Also, Ash was killed, or fatally wounded at least, multiple times throughout those books and still lived to see the end, too. So, I REALLY hoped she wouldn't ... but oh well.

Speaking of the end, I think this ending was way too happy. You know, there was a lot of intestines falling out of guts in this book, lots of bashing heads in, cutting off limbs, and the overall novel and setting is just dark. It is what I love so much about these novels, because despite it all, Kagawa can write. And she creates such a perfectly sinister and terrifying atmosphere, and then goes and writes such an unfitting ending. The stakes weren't very high, there weren't a lot of deaths, just one actually, which made it all the more underwhelming. And then Allie just goes skipping off into the sunset with her lover, having successfully saved the world and rid it of everyone who wants her dead. No. Fuck no. There was one scene, that character death scene, that was tragic and unfortunate and really did made me cry and was ABSOLUTELY beautiful, but other than that, I'm very dissatisfied with the ending.

Well. What do I do now? I still believe Kagawa is a badass, and she'll always be one of my favorite authors. And, bearing all this in mind, I still enjoyed the novel for the most part. Allie and Zeke could be annoying, yes, and Allie's behavior around Zeke, by which I mean her constantly turning into mush and incompetence itself where he's concerned, was completely infuriating, but ... yeah, well. I don't know man.

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