Kathryn's Reviews > Children of Anguish and Anarchy

Okay friends strap in.

Giving this book only 1 star hurts me more than you would believe. The first two books were two of my favorite YA books that I’ve ever read, I loved them. Maybe that’s why I’m going to give the review I am, but this author had a lot to live up to because of her previous work.

I’m going to write two parts of a review, the first part will be spoiler-free and the rest will have specifics and spoilers. I’ll indicate where the shift is so don’t fret.

While I do still love the writing itself and the style, this book feels almost completely disconnected to the first two books. You know how the Percy Jackson has the original series with 5 books then it goes into the Heroes of Olympus series with the same characters but new villain/characters? Well this book felt like the beginning of a whole new series, but at least Percy Jackson wrapped itself up before going into the next series. This book ignores plot that happened in the last book and the CHARACTERS. There’s a specific character in mind that will be mentioned later because WHERE WERE THEY? And this is the last and final book? And we never saw them again? The plot was very rushed and I just didn’t feel connected to anyone. Sure the new land and the new people were cool and all, I just don’t see where they fit in.

Anyways, let’s get into specifics and here come the spoilers.



***SPOILERS***



So Baldyr? Who is he and why have we just never heard of him or the skulls before? Where did they come from? This is the type of antagonist for his own series not a 350 page book ending of a trilogy out of NO WHERE. I just don’t see where this fits in! There was a civil war and then all the sudden Orïsha is just unified to fight an enemy country and that’s that? It was too easy. The easy way out to end her series. It just feels like she couldn’t think of anything else and so she just threw all these new elements at us. CAN WE ALSO TALK ABOUT ROËN?? WHERE. WAS. HE? He was mentioned like twice when Zelie was thinking of him, but we just… never see him again? That’s also why this got such a low rating because it doesn’t make any sense. Did the author just forget about him??