A review by anbar
The Morning Star by Robin Bridges

2.0

A disappointing end to the trilogy, with too many quick fixes that happened so abruptly that I had a few "wait, what? *flip back*" moments. The love story, which seemed to start off tantalizingly enough by the end of Book 1, continued to NOT develop any deeper here; it's supposed to be an epic love story, but I just didn't feel it ("But the kissing!!!" "Yeah, and...? The 'and' is the important part. And shut up, I don't mean sex."). There was a bit of dilemma in the beginning, but then it felt like a lot of passive-protagonist stagnating in the middle before stuffing too much action in the last 20 pages. The Grigori could have been better developed to make me care about them, not to have them just be completely interchangeable props. It felt unrealistic the way Katerina kept worrying about/protecting Danilo after everything he'd done (seriously, he basically roofied you in Book 1; I don't think you'd forget/forgive a thing like that!). Yeah, you wouldn't wish [spoiler] on anyone, BUT STILL, that was some next-level Mary-Sue-ing. The conclusion left me oddly unsatisfied, too neat while at the same time leaving too many details up in the air. This felt like a rushed, slapped-together conclusion to a 'well, trilogies are popular so we gotta stretch this into 3' affair.