Reviews

Legends and Liars by Morgan Rhodes

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jasminelilymae's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

lyakimov's review against another edition

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3.0

3.5 stars.

I have so many thoughts and feelings about this finale. Overall I enjoyed this duology a lot, but I feel like the character development was lacking with how many side characters we had. I think one of the main reasons for this is the book being in first person POV, so obviously we do not see in the heads of anyone else and it is tough to tell what anyone's motivations are. I also feel like everything wrapped up so quickly and simply. We could have really done with an epilogue just to see how things have changed since all the revelations in last chapter.

I do appreciate that the Bechdel test was successfully passed but Josslyn and Celina's friendship felt disingenuous to me until Celina's magic confession. I wish we had some more fleshing out of their relationship. Also, Jericho and Viktor's relationship was really complex and we really did not get to see it expanded upon the way that it could have been.

The romance was cute but I felt like Jericho was unnecessarily whiny this whole book. Josslyn actually seemed more mature than him, which is definitely a switch from the previous book. It felt so much like insta-love because Jericho was so hot-and-cold every second of the book. There was not that much relationship development done in this book, it was mostly in the first so it kind of felt weird. Also, how the hell did Jericho just RESIST Valerie and she just lets him go on his merry way at the end? The entire series, she is vicious and murderous and then BOOM she's like "whatever Jericho, go do whatever you want!" as if he isn't indebted to her for literally infusing him with death magic and always keeping him at an arm's length. There was a missed opportunity to explore this complex relationship between Valerie and Jericho because it clearly seemed to go deeper than surface level.

There was one thing that was absolutely BURNING up my mind while reading this book. I love Morgan Rhodes and her previous series, especially the Spirits and Thieves series (I am still secretly hoping the third book will be un-cancelled!). I feel like there were so many parallels to S&T that just made me remember that I will never have closure for that trilogy. The big thing that was obviously a call-back to S&T was Valerie's magic golden knife, which is the same knife that Markus has in S&T. Valerie engraves marks into Jericho's arm to force him to obey her command, identical to what Markus does to Farrell and the other Inner Circle members in S&T. How the hell is this dagger crossing universes so much? It has been in three so far, where might it go next? Also, every time death magic is mentioned, it is called "the darkest magic," which of course shoots me into flashbacks of "The Darkest Magic," continuing to taunt me about the fact that I will never read book three of S&T. Is this a sign that Morgan Rhodes is going to release The Cursed Heir??? My delusional heart says yes but my brain says no. I just spent so much time thinking "omg would this happen to Farrell in book 3???" BUT I am able to separate these books from S&T and enjoy them separately, of course.

I think this was a good, solid duology and I always will enjoy reading Morgan Rhodes' writing and her characters. I will continue to read whatever Morgan comes out with next (S&T3? okay delusional)! This series, in my opinion, should have been a trilogy just to flesh out all the characters and the plot but overall it was super entertaining!