I’m not sure how I feel about the final installment of this trilogy by Sara Wolf. It was on the long side, although it was as fun and action packed as the others, but I’m not sure how I feel about the ending.
For one thing, Zera in this book seems to love Nightsinger, the witch who made her into a Heartless and forced Zera to do her bidding for three years. All Zera talked about throughtout the series was wanting her heart back, but when reunited with the woman who held it hostage all that time she treats her like an old friend. Didn’t she hate Nightsinger? Did I miss something crucial there?
There’s a lot going on in this book. Varia goes on a killing spree, burning down whole cities and forests, but they find out it’s not really Varia wreaking all this destruction. She’s possessed by the Bone Tree, which apparently has a tendency of choosing a young girl to devour every century or so. This time Varia is the unlucky chosen.
Through research the gang find out that the Bone Tree and the Tree of Souls used to be one tree that was split in two to create magic and the Heartless. The Bone Tree is wreaking havoc through Varia because it’s in pain and it’s pissed.
Zera realizes the right thing to do is to close the wound so the two trees can be one again, even though doing so will mean ending magic and witches and Heartless for good. She’s not sure even she will survive the procedure, so she doesn’t tell her friends about it because she knows they’ll try to stop her.
Sure enough, as soon as he realizes what she’s doing, Lucien orders her to stop. Zera says that, even though she’s weeping, his magic is too strong for her to resist.
Then the chapter ends and we jump to an epilogue, which starts with an historical document talking about The Contentment, which was the period following the reuniting of the Bone Tree and the Tree of Souls. There’s no explanation as to how Zera managed to resist Lucien’s magic. It’s completely skipped over.
Apparently Zera disappeared for a couple years and no one knew if she was alive or dead. Then she reappears at the very end to be reunited with Lucien and live happily ever after, but I want to know what she was doing for all that time. When she was Heartless she kept going on about how she wished she could remember her family and her life before she became Heartless. Why don’t we get to see any of that? Why make it out like the only thing that matters is her romantic relationship?
That said, I was glad to see that they managed to save Varia, who got to live happily ever after with Fione, and they did end up naming their first child Zeran, after Zera.