Dante and Heather are still separated by the various
factions trying to hunt Dante down, while Lucien, Von and the gang continue to
hunt for them. But between Fallen machinations and the call of the Llygad, neither
is able to launch the rescue efforts they would like to.
Heather continues to extricate herself from tricky
situations to try and reach Dante, but every time she breaks out of one trap
there appears to be another waiting and time is running out – Dante, held by
Dion and tormented by Loki, is fraying. His fragile mind is growing more and
more damaged as he approaches his limit
If he breaks, he will become the Great Destroyer, the
Unending Road, using his awesome powers of creation for destruction – and then
the world is doomed or those who love him most may be forced to kill him.
Right, let’s start with some major positives. First and
foremost, the 8 gazillion unnecessary cast members are largely taking a back
seat. Largely. They’re still there and mentioned far too often in passing and
in any other book I would be yelling “kill some side characters, damn it!” but
for this series they have been cut down by them both teaming up (so forming
less random groups with their own agendas) and by them just not getting the
same level of page time as they have in previous books. For the most part, the
book has managed to stay relatively focused on Dante and Heather with only a
few distractions as you’d find in most books.
Another positive is that the bad guys that were actually relevant
this book were fairly major powers. Mauvais was there, hanging around finally
coming to terms with just how big a hornet’s nest he’s kicked which was great
fun to read – I do like to see some good comeuppance. Heather’s father also
took a step back but he’s still lurking in the corners so I don’t think we can
say goodbye to him just yet. The FBI and Shadow Branch lurked around but after
some initial forays fell back to leave the action more centred on the Fallen as
secondary but mainly Dion. He’s a later arriving bad guy with a very petty,
personal agenda more than the world destroying but at least he has some decent
supernatural oomph.
Another major plus for me was that all of the overwrought
emotional language, endless Dante flashbacks and fractured viewpoints, the
little girl he saved, the endless memories of Chloe and papa Prejean – all the
pointless minutiae of Dante’s tortured past and shattered psyche – actually came
together and were relevant beyond the whole “woe is Dante, poor Dante, our tortured
anti-hero is the most tortured of them all!”
It’s actually ironic considering how overwritten this
series is that we haven’t truly had much information on the Great Destroyer,
the Unending Road and what that means. This book brings it home – the true
consequences of what they’re fighting for. Not true love. Not whether the
Fallen get their creator to repair/renew/rebuild Gehenna. Not whether the
various vampire societies get their shiny new True Blood vampire for whatever reason
they want it – the ultimate ending is Dante’s cracked mind finally shattering,
his Bad Seed programming coming up and his anger and pain exploding in horrible
messy ways that results in the whole world being reduced to ash in the fires of
his rage. And all those people pinning their hopes to him have to decide to
stop him – if they can.
The epic consequences are here, the world shattering
stuff, the elements that have been lurking in the background and slowly added
to but generally have kept a step back away from the main story to date. And
simply by shifting the tone like that, the whole overwrought language and
flashbacks and general writing becomes more important, more useful, more
fitting to the book because they’re all now relevant – whether storywise or
simply thematically.
We also have some nice texture added to some
worldbuilding with some more information on the llygad (albeit it being a
distraction)
One thing I have to say about this book – in fact the
whole series - is that it’s dark. It’s unrelentingly dark. It’s grim. And I don’t
mean this in a “oooh where are my happy ever after and pink bunnies?!” way, I
mean in the fact that nothing good ever happens. Good, in this series, is
managing to escape from something bad in time for the next bad to happen. It’s
not necessarily a bad thing, it shows just how much Dante is in constant demand
and how many people are harrying him, but at some point I kind of want him to
catch a break. Or at least turn more of his enemies into goo or
three-headed-holy-chanting-chimera.
To flip the other way? Not so much in this book, but
certainly we have foreshadowing of all those micro characters till being ready
to come back – we didn’t focus on them but Caterina and Dion and Gillespie and
Rutgers and the Shadow Branch and the FBI and Heather’s dad – they’re all still
out there and all still plotting along with the newly introduce Loki, Mauvais
who may not be dead, the different factions of the Fallen are still plotting
and now Leviathan has risen from the depths… they all kind of took a step back
from clogging this book but they’re all circling like vultures of excess plot
waiting to fall on the series and clog it up again.
Minoritywise we have Emmet (a gay man) and Merri (a Black
woman) who kind of hover in the background of the main team. Having been badly
treated by the Shadow Branch they jumped ship to Dante and are now trying to
prove themselves worthy of his team’s trust. So far they’re not allowed to meet
him and they follow Silver and Von around doing as they’re told in the hope of
being inducted further in. They’re not bad characters at all, but I’d like them
to be more integral.
Several of the factions of FBI are POC and Merri’s sire and bigwig in the Conseil do something (sang, I expect) is a WOC but her faction doesn’t seem to be involved as much as the Circle de Druide. In short, it’s a continuation of the series – it’s very good at making sure there are lots of POC and the odd GBLT person hanging around but they’re usually pretty ancillary to the plot line.
Annie managed to go an entire book without epicly
screwing up. This may be a record. I still don’t like how this series treats
mental illness, as
I’ve mentioned before. Especially when you consider that the big bad
darkness, the ultimate threat against which everyone is so terrified of is
Dante going insane. Ultimately, the mentally ill Dante is the greatest threat
the world faces.
In terms of women we have Heather who is resourceful,
strong, rescues herself twice and never just hangs around of rescue. She’s
determined in the face of career and parental disapproval, brave in the face of
ultimate danger, but still ready to jump back even if uber-twu-lub Dante is a
threat because she’s not so great a fool to ignore that he is a threat. She is
protective of her family and loved ones, she refuses to be coddled and kept
safe and certainly won’t be “got rid of”. She is aware of her own capabilities,
she takes risks but they’re sensible ones. She is an all round excellent
character.
The other women in the series (except Annie) are not nearly as explored – but they show a similar level of competence and skill, determination, agency and motives – even when heavily influenced (like Caterina and Merri by their organisations) they still maintain a measure of personal autonomy and opinions. Party line is not their watchword. And they don’t hate each other. We actually have several women, some of them gathered together and they don’t instantly loathe each other! It’s probably a little depressing that I’m impressed by this.
In all this book felt like an extremely good book. My
only doubt is that I’ve read this series quite quickly (I got an ARC for this
book and realised I needed to catch up on the entire series as soon as
possible) and I think my opinion is slightly skewed by a low expectation I had
picking it up. I expected clogged storylines. I expected overwritten
clunkiness. I expected 8 gazillion characters doing irrelevant things I didn’t
care about but all of which would make Dante the saddest panda in the history of
sad pandas.
 |
| Don't try this at home. Pandas eat people. |
