Ruin and Rising

Phew, it was about time that this trilogy ended! My boyfriend and I finished it because we had gone too far to give up (and because we bought the box set), but it was getting painful to watch such a downfall. This review will be rather short, I don't want to dwell too much on this disappointment.

Summary

Alina is very tired since the end of the second book, but the future of the society depends on her. She recovers quietly in tunnels and caves and tries to build an army with her few surviving allies. Her hope lies in the discovery of the Firebird, the third amplifier that has the potential to make her even more powerful and give her a chance against the evil Darkling. In the course of her quest, she will learn disturbing things about the nature of the link between her and the Darkling and its power.

Impressions

I don't usually give books stars in my reviews, but for this book I think I'd put a nice ⭐⭐/5. There were some great lengths; Alina was downright tiresome; Mal, the source of romance in the book, was annoying until he became appallingly quaint at the end, because he's supposedly headed for his death :

“Going to miss this,” he said as he kissed my cheeks, my jaw, my eyelids. “The way you taste.” He set his lips to the hollow beneath my ear. “The way you smell.” […]

Then he drew back, searching my eyes. “I wanted more for you,” he said. “A white veil in you hair. Vows we could keep.”

[…]

“You are all I’ve ever wanted,” he said. “You are the whole of my heart.”

– Ruin and Rising, by Leigh Bardugo, p. 304.

The other characters were shallow and frankly unlovable and they all had the same, somewhat arrogant, predictable humor. And honestly, the ending...

It's such a shame, because I loved the first volume. I found it perfect in its way. But I have the very strong impression that the author had this first volume in mind for a long time and that she had polished it well. Then she was too successful and rushed to write the next two volumes. In my opinion, they are simply sloppy.