I’ve loved this series by Libba Bray since the beginning, and while I’m sad to say goodbye to these characters, overall I felt it was a very satisfying ending, with a few exceptions.
I thought Theta had pretty well taken care of Roy in the last book when she made it clear she would burn him again if he didn’t leave her alone, but apparently the douche just can’t take a hint because now he’s hooked up with the KKK and is using their nationwide network to try to find Theta and force her back into that abusive marriage.
Isaiah tried to will himself to have visions and managed to communicate with another clairvoyant named Sarah Beth Olsen who lives in Nebraska and wants Isaiah to come join her so they can defeat the King of Crows together.
Meanwhile, the King of Crows is busy taking over small towns all over America, leaving them dead and dried out overnight.
The Diviners attend Sarah Snow’s funeral in a last-ditch attempt to convince Jacob Marlowe to destroy his machine and avoid bringing about the end of the world. Not only does Marlowe refuse to listen (shocker), but he condemns the Diviners as traitors and anarchists, accusing them of setting off the bomb because their friend Mabel had gotten caught up with the anarchists and was with one of them near the bomb when it went off. No one knows that Mabel was trying to disarm the bomb or that the Diviners had absolutely no idea what Mabel’s friends were planning.
But, as always, the truth doesn’t matter as much as a good story. The Diviners are recognized during the funeral and have to scram, but they get separated. Evie, Isaiah, and Theta run off with Sam to join the circus he used to work for. It’s perfect because they dress up in costumes so no one will recognize them. Evie dresses up as a clown, which she hates, but it works. Isaiah loves hanging out with the animals, which helps to keep him out of sight.
Ling takes Jericho to her ex-girlfriend’s apartment because she knows her ex, Alma, is heading out of town to tour with an orchestra made up entirely of women. Alma invites them to join her on tour because she figures they’ll be safer if they keep moving, and they accept because it makes sense. Also Ling wants an excuse to continue hanging out with Alma, and eventually the two of them do manage to come to an arrangement – or at least agree to come to an arrangement – over the fact that Alma is sexual and Ling is not.
Meanwhile, Jericho starts dating the drummer, Guadeloupe, who helps him start to get over Evie.
Memphis, Bill, and Henry hop a train out of town. It just happens to be heading south to Louisiana, but before they can reach their destination, they get recognized and have to jump off the train… while it’s still moving.
They end up in Mississippi where there’s massive flooding and all the white people are heading out of town, but the black population is made to stay and help pile up sandbags to try to keep the flooding at bay. Memphis and Bill are made to help because they’re black, and when Memphis tries to argue that they’re not workers, just travelers passing through, Bill advises him to shut up. While Memphis has only ever lived in Harlem, Bill is from the south and knows what it means to be black in the south. Add to that the fact that they’re fugitives on the run and it’s best they don’t draw attention to themselves.
When they start working, Henry starts working beside them. The white overseer tells Henry he doesn’t have to, but he insists that, if his friends work, he’ll work.
Eventually, all the Diviners have a dream in which Mabel tells them to go to a particular town in Kansas, so they all head over and meet up there, only to find that it’s a ghost town. All the buildings are in tact, but it’s completely deserted without any signs of life at all. Then the King of Crows shows up with a veritable army of the dead. When the Diviners try to combine forces to defeat the army, the plan backfires when they realize the dead are growing stronger and whatever power is used against them they are now able to absorb and use as their own.
The Diviners finally manage to fight their way out using Jericho’s super strength, which he hates because he prefers to take the nonviolent approach, although I’m not sure the dead actually feel pain, and it’s not like you can kill them again. But Jericho has a point that it’s a slippery slope from fighting for your life to fighting out of habit.
So they make it out of there and finally make it to Sarah Beth in Nebraska. Sarah Beth is an only child who has always been sickly and had a near-death experience a few years ago, and ever since then she’s said creepy things (i.e. she accurately predicts when and how people will die). She also has the mental capacity of someone about 10 years old, even though she’s a teenager, and the doctors say she’ll never mature beyond that point.
Her parents own a farm, but it hasn’t rained in ages and all the farm hands have left, either because the Olsens couldn’t pay or because Sarah Beth freaked them out – or a combination of the two.
Jericho grew up on a farm and he knows it’s too much for one person to handle, so he volunteers to help (and the help of his friends) in exchange for letting them stay on the farm until they figure out their next steps.
Sarah Beth and Isaiah quickly become friends. She refers to her power as “moonglow” and is happy to finally have someone with whom she can share moonglow. At one point they even combine their powers and will it to rain.
But Sarah Beth is also kind of creepy and I tried from early on to determine whose side she was on. She seemed a little too eager for Isaiah to come to Nebraska and that he not stop in Kansas, but after what happened there, I thought maybe she really was just concerned for his safety.
At one point they were all eating dinner when she started talking about all her suitors, despite the fact that she lives on a farm in the middle of nowhere. But they play along, and when someone asks which one she’ll marry, she says, “The one who promised to make me his queen.” And that’s when I knew the Diviners were in trouble.
Sure enough, Sarah Beth takes Isaiah out to the river and explains that the King of Crows is going to make her his queen, but he won’t hurt Isaiah because he’s important to Sarah Beth. Isaiah, of course, is horrified and tries to convince Sarah Beth that the King of Crows is a liar and has no intention of keeping his promise to her. Well, of course Sarah Beth doesn’t want to hear that. She demands Isaiah give her his moonglow and that’s when Isaiah realizes that all those times they had been “sharing” moonglow, she had really been sucking his power out of him. Now she wants it all, and when he refuses to give it to her, she bashes his head in with a rock, knocking him into the river so it’s unclear whether the head injury or the river kills him.
While all this is happening, Evie gets a bad feeling about Sarah Beth and reads one of her objects. She warns the others and they all rush out to save Isaiah, but they’re too late.
Memphis is, of course, distraught and makes a deal with the King of Crows: he’ll hand over his healing power to have his brother back, which is a big problem because they need his power to heal the breach between worlds and stop the coming apocalypse. Not to mention the aforementioned fact that the King of Crows is a liar and doesn’t keep his promises.
While all this is going down, Mr. Olsen sells them out. There are no secrets in a farm town, and when people figure out he’s harboring fugitives, they don’t give him much of an option other than to turn them in, so while they’re in the midst of grieving for Isaiah, Jacob Marlowe shows up and hauls them all to New York to hook them up to his machine. The only one who stays behind is Bill so he can suck the power out of Sarah Beth, although I’m not sure if he sucked out her entire life force and killed her, or just drained her of her power. He knew Mr. Olsen would kill him for it, but he didn’t really want to live in a world without Isaiah anyway.
So Marlowe drags all the other Diviners to New York and hooks them up to his machine. By this time, Memphis has realized his mistake in giving up his power, but, despite the fact that the King of Crows made sure to drain him, Memphis somehow still has some remnants of his power, which doesn’t make any sense.
When they get hooked up to the machine, they all manage to will themselves to sleep so they can dream walk together and heal the breach, which Memphis is somehow able to do even after supposedly giving up his power.
Meanwhile, Isaiah bargains with the King of Crows to let him return to the land of the living. By seeing through his disguise, Isaiah is able to disarm the King of Crows and make his way back to the land of the living just as Memphis is closing the breach.
So, even though the King of Crows sucked Memphis dry of his power specifically so he couldn’t heal the breach, he still somehow manages to heal the breach. And even though Isaiah was killed, he gets to live out the rest of his life with no other sacrifices made by him or anyone else, and that’s the kind of thing that drives me nuts. If you’re going to kill off a character, you have to leave them dead and stop coming up with bullshit ways to bring them back to life. Just because you have magic shouldn’t mean that death isn’t permanent.
So Memphis heals the breach, but for some reason, Jericho has to sacrifice himself to finish the job and I’m not entirely sure what happened there. Did they need a sacrifice to finish the job? Did they need Jericho’s super strength to finish closing the breach? I even rewound to relisten to that section, and I’m still not sure why Jericho’s death was necessary.
In any case, Isaiah makes it back to the land of the living safe and sound and gets to live out the rest of his life with everyone else, but all their powers seem to be fading, probably because they were linked to the breach between worlds, and with the breach healed, they no longer have access to their powers, which means they get to live out the rest of their days as normal people. Oh, and Sam and Evie got engaged, and I just loved that! ❤️❤️