In Legacy of Light, Sarah Raughley has crafted a fittingly epic end to her Effigies trilogy. Maia, Chae Rin and Lake are on the run, being hunted as terrorists, and Maia’s former idol Belle has gone rogue. Maia’s twin June, who died in a fire years ago, is somehow back and wreaking havoc in Maia’s name. And Saul is still obsessed with finding Maia so he can use her to get in touch with the consciousness of the original Fire Effigy.

I will highly recommend re-reading the first two books first before going into this one. It’s been a year since I read book two, and I spent a lot of the first half of the book feeling thoroughly confused by all the references to characters and situations that I could no longer remember. Raughley drops us right into the middle of the action, and never lets up on the pace, which makes for a heart-racing quick pace of a thrill ride, but also assumes readers understand what’s happening.

I love that this book delves deep into the mythology and origins of the Effigies. We finally learn how they got their powers and why the powers are passed on from one generation of girls to another throughout centuries. We also finally understand what the phantoms are, and why they are so closely linked to the Effigies and the mythos surrounding their powers. That part of the book was really strong, and I love the intricacies of the world Raughley has created.

I also love the last few chapters of the book, as Maia comes to terms with the uncomfortable reality of her destiny, and things that happened earlier on in the series (e.g. why the death at the end of book 2 had to happen, why the deaths in Maia’s family had to happen) come full circle. Raughley is fantastic at creating memorable endings, and this book is no exception. Tough decisions had to be made and all victories require sacrifice. Raughley pulls back just enough to keep this book from a fully tragic ending, but she does take us through a gamut of emotions along the way, and continues to emphasize her theme on the emotional toll of heroism.

I wish the book had been shorter and possibly tighter. While the ending was strong and a lot of the building action had a purpose, the book often felt like the third movie in The Hobbit trilogy — battle after battle after endless battle such that it felt repetitive and draggy after a while. The final third or so of the book was so strong and compelling that I wish a lot of the rising action had been condensed more.

Still, overall, Legacy of Light — and the Effigies trilogy as a whole — has the feel of an incredibly kickass graphic novel or blockbuster movie trilogy. Raughley has created an intricate world of magic and the emotionally charged consequences of such power in the world, and I think it will translate wonderfully into a visual medium.

+

Thank you to Simon and Schuster Canada for an e-galley of this book in exchange for an honest review.

The Nameless City is about a city located on a strategic trade route in what appears to be ancient China. Because of its location, it’s constantly getting conquered, with each new ruling group renaming the city, to the point that any explorer who asked what the city was called would get a different answer depending on who they were speaking to. Notably, the people who are actually descended from the city’s original inhabitants — who semi-ironically call themselves the Named — do not have a name for the city at all. They have also decided not to fight back against invading forces — so long as they’re allowed to live in peace, they find it’s easier to just let the invaders fight it out among themselves.

When I received The Divided Earth for review, I actually hadn’t yet read the first two books in the series, and so had to borrow them from the library. I’m really glad I did, partly because The Divided Earth takes off so immediately after the second book, The Stone Heart, that I would’ve been hopelessly lost if I had come in cold, but also because the three books together tell such a compelling arc that much of the impact would be lost if part of the story was missed. In particular, The Divided Earth is super action packed — it’s like the final movie in The Hobbit trilogy where it’s one battle scene after another — and without the context of the preceding books, I may not have cared as much about the battle.

The Divided Earth is a good, solid conclusion to the trilogy. Ezri, a Dao prince and now the General of all Blades, has unleashed the long-held secret power of napatha (a substance that can explode and burn through stone) on the invading armies and seeks to cement his power by pretending to have more napatha than he actually does. His second-in-command, Mura, a Named woman whom Ezri rescued from a life of poverty, has her own axe to grind against the city that she feels didn’t care for her, and her own plans for using napatha to wreak revenge. Our heroes — the Dao boy Kai and the Named girl Rat — are on a mission to steal back the formula for napatha. They strongly believe in Kai’s father’s dream of creating a council of nations to run the city and thereby end all the years of fighting. And Kai’s mother is readying to lead an army to storm the palace and depose Ezri.

As a stand-alone book, it’s a bit weak. Similar to how I felt about the final movie in The Hobbit trilogy, I felt the action sequences dragged on too long. And while I loved that the female characters Rat and Mura were given the epic battle scene in the story, Rat almost seemed like a superhero rather than a human girl with how much of a beating she was able to take from Mura and still come up swinging.

I found the strength of the book to be in its set-up. The first volume, The Nameless City, had a really strong commentary about colonialism — how each force that conquers this city has their own name for it, whereas the people who live in it (the “Named”) don’t really call it anything in particular; how the Named choose not to fight back just so long as they can live peaceful lives under whichever conqueror is in power at that time; and how Kai’s father’s solution (to set up a council of all the conquering forces to rule the city together) doesn’t take into account the Named at all.

I found the second volume had the strongest emotional wallop, with the way it delved into various parent-child relationships — especially Ezri and his father with a horrifying scene that made me gasp out loud. But also, it was emotional to see Kai confronting his father about not really being a father until a few months ago, and Rat confronting how much she misses her parents, but also how much the monks who raised her have now become family. There’s a lot of loss in the second volume that made it particularly powerful.

The Divided Earth didn’t have as much of an impact on me as the other two, but it does tie things together. It also gives us a great character in Kai’s mother, and brings back Rat’s friends to play a key role, which was nice. And finally, it gives us a nice glimpse into the future of the city, and the potential future for Rat and Kai. The artwork is wonderful, and the trilogy as a whole is really strong.

+

Thank you to Raincoast Books for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Hollywood Ending is a fun, light-hearted and entertaining Hollywood-themed murder mystery. The series heroine is Dayna Anderson, a former actress (the semi-famous kind whom people mistakenly think they must’ve known back in high school) who now works as an apprentice private investigator, solving cases for the reward money. In this second book in the series, Dayna gets pulled into a murder case when a Hollywood publicist gets killed during an ATM robbery. Dayna finds the killer within the first few chapters, so it’s a pretty safe bet she’s got it wrong, and spends the rest of the book tracking down one red herring after another until she finally confronts the killer.

I had fun reading this book. It’s a quick read and an entertaining cozy mystery, and I love all the funny Hollywood-esque adventures. I also like the realism of the heroine in this case immediately calling police when she gets a lead instead of insisting on running after the killer herself (a fun trope in cozy mysteries, but somewhat unsafe in real life).

That being said, the number of erroneous tips Dayna calls in to the police did become annoying after a while. Like, how many times does your hypothesis need to be proven wrong before you become less confident that you’re absolutely 100% correct this time around? To be fair, I did have the benefit of knowing there was a whole stack of pages left to go in the story before the killer is revealed, but still, with all the erroneous leads she calls in, I’m surprised the police haven’t started blocking her calls yet.

Still, overall it’s a fun and funny mystery series. I enjoyed all the celebrity events, and particularly getting to peek at what could conceivably be inside an awards show swag bag. And for all my eye rolling at Dayna’s tendency to chase red herrings, I have to admit I didn’t guess the killer at all.

+

Thank you to Thomas Allen & Son for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.