Cormel, Undead Master vampire, is finally tired of
waiting for Rachel to discover how to preserve their souls after death. He
wants results and he wants them now – or Ivy dies.
You’d think angry Master vampires would be enough for
anyone to deal with – but the Dewar of the elves is forming their own plans –
machinations that could have dire consequences not just for the vampires caught
in their manipulations – but the future of magic itself.
Throw in Earthbound demons, pixies that can’t fly and the
elven goddess coming back and gunning for Rachel and it feels like everything
is collapsing at once – and only Rachel can put it together again.
This is the last of the Hollows Series and I’m not sure
how to react to that
Actually, that’s a lie. I react to that by weeping inconsolably, running around the house babbling incomprehensibly in between screaming “WHYYYYYYYYYY?! at an uncaring sky before huddling in a corner, clutching my tablet and rocking back and forth, occasionally pleading with the universe for just one more book.
But that rather lacks dignity, it has to be said.
This book, the last book (NOOOOO), just makes all of that
even worse! Because it is pretty much the perfect ending to the Hollows Saga,
it draws upon so much that has made this series awesome ; it manages to both
perfectly cap this awesome series and remind me how awesome this series is and
how it CANNOT END! NOOOOO!
Ok, I’m trying to write a coherent review, I really am –
but all I keep hearing is “NOOOOOOOOOOOO!” repeating over and over in my head.
This story brings together this awesome world, bringing
it back to its core and underscoring everything we’ve already learned – that
basically nearly everything out there is a result of the Elves vs Demon
conflict – the vampires and their lack of souls and their whole toxic society
and culture, the weres, the witches, the curses on the elves and the demons,
the ever-after, ley lines etc. I love how the power of this is shown through
the eyes of those around Rachel – especially Trent and Al – we see that hatred
that is saturated in their cultures but we also see the guilt; the awareness of
the sheer atrocities both species have inflicted not just on each other but
also on the world in general is really prevalent throughout the book.
Another constant reminder is just how broken their world actually is – how everything is pretty much wrong; like the undead vampires and their constant, normalised abuse, the FIB and their inability to enforce the law and the IS and their unwillingness to do so and so many other little hints.
The best thing about all these reminders is that it draws
upon the whole series. We don’t need to be told these things again, we are just
reminded – we’re reminded of the demon’s humanity under their painful
bitterness (which reflects so much on past book), we’re reminded of the abuse we’ve seen Ivy and Kisten suffer
among the vampires, we’re reminded of how Edden and the FIB were desperate when
they turned to Rachel. And these reminders place those past books in context –
so many I can’t even list but the biggest one to me was Trent who seems to have
transformed so much as a character. We look back on Trent in the early books
and see his cruelty, his need to dominate and control, his hunger for power –
and while there was certainly an element of saving his species, ultimately his
morality was purely elven. As we see more elves and more of elven society it’s
really clear now that Trent in Dead Witch Walking and beyond wasn’t
just an evil mob boss – he was an elf. A typical elf with elven values and
elven goals and elven thinking.
Ultimately, this world is a mess and nothing can truly be
resolved, nothing can be fixed, nothing can be stabilised until that endless,
bitter hatred between the elves and the demons is addressed. But at the same
time this broken world rests in a very fragile balance and anything disrupting
it too greatly; everyone tolerates so much brokenness for fear that everything
will shatter if they try and fix it. I just think this is such a perfect
culmination to the whole series – because the whole series has been about this
fragile balance. Rachel locking away Piscary and disrupting the balance of
power, David and the Were focus, the Banshees learning how to increase their
breeding, uncursing the elves and Cormel’s idea of the undead keeping their
souls – the whole series has been about that fragile power balance and how, in
some ways, Rachel herself (an unbound, uncursed demon with connections to every
supernatural faction) is the very epitome of that balance being upset.
All of this culmination of the whole series, making every book relevant, really makes me want to start the whole series again and see all the gems that will be revealed with this hindsight.
So that brings us to this book – we have the core
storyline; Landon and his scheming and Cormel’s ultimatum drives the plot - but
it’s more crowning everything from the series – unwinding the world’s biggest
knots the foundation of which has to be addressing the war between the elves
and the demons and through that everything else – but only in a way that won’t
destroy the already fragile balance.
But along with the big world questions on how to get this
setting in a stable place with its worse wrongs addressed (which it does,
awesomely) there’s also the personal stories: Jenks and his family that has
grown up, Ivy and her constant self-hatred and fear of losing her soul, Nina
and her battle with Felix, Rachel and Trent’s relationship, what she feels for
him and whether she’s sabotaging him. And, of course, Rachel herself – born a
witch, earthbound demon, member of a werepack, best friend with a vampire and
covered in elven magic – where does she stand, how does she balance them all.
Which is yet another element of Rachel I love – how she’s grown as a character goes without saying but also how she stands at the centre of all the groups and sees them all in so many ways and so deeper than most – like her trust of Al and being the one person who really doesn’t want the demons trapped in the Ever After. I love how she convinces others, especially Trent (and Al and the children is just too perfect).
I could keep going for hours about how perfectly this
book finishes the series with an epic plot that draws in every element that
made this amazing world and these excellent characters – but that will eat in
my rocking back and forth in a corner moaning time.
After many many books of endless pain and anguish, Ivy
actually get a happy ending and with another woman. It has been very shaky for
a very long time and for most of the book – but Ivy and Nina. Between them they
represent the only POC and LGBT people in the book (and for much of the series
for that matter which is a criticism though it pains me to see any negative
about the previous, there is a lack there) and their path has been painful and
hard – but it doesn’t end in the tragedy I have long feared.
I can go on for a long time lavishing fulsome praise upon
fulsome praise – I could literally go on for hours. But that would delay me
barricading myself in a small room with a huge vat of coffee and just read the
whole thing back to back without a single pause or interruption (except for
bouts of wailing because this series is over).
