Reckoning by Laury Falter
Kindle Edition: $9.99
Print Edition: $9.99
Length: approx. 321 pages
Reading Level: YA
Reckoning on Amazon (opens in a new window)
And here we are. The final book in the Guardian Trilogy. Best book of the trilogy, best cover of the trilogy. The font is consistent with the previous book, which is nice. Falter's name is yet again too small, but so it goes. The image, though, is the best. It's the perfect foreshadowing for what the novel contains. The scythes bring to mind death, and the way that they are crossed also looks like wings. It works beautifully.
After the events of the last few chapters of Eternity, Maggie remembers everything. And now she knows that everything she loves is at risk, so she sets out on her own, hunting the Fallen. The hunted becomes the hunter. But her actions bring about consequences she never intended. By trying to save Alterums everywhere, Maggie may have just started a civil war.
Comparatively speaking, I flew through this book. I recognized while I was reading it, even. And it was such a relief. The plot actually progresses. We, as readers, gain more insight into characters, and we get to leave New Orleans. New characters are introduced yet again, and they have real, legitimate purpose and development. Campion was great, but he was a little one-note. Best yet, we finally understand what the gift Maggie brought back to Earth when she fell truly is.
We also finally get to resolve some of the sexual tension. Kind of. Maggie and Eran finally do the deed. And the first time I read it, I found it incredibly sexy. I mean, they have sex in the air. That's pretty damn cool. Unfortunately, upon rereading it, it's an even darker "fade to black" than the honeymoon in Twilight. I wish I didn't have to reference that series so much, but there are so many parallels it's hard not to.
Since this is the best book of the series, it makes sense that this is the best writing as well. It's more polished than ever before, and is therefore the easiest to read. The biggest problem is with key inconsistencies...and with one key consistency.
Alterums and Fallen have wings. Five letters. Wings. And yet, nearly every time they are mentioned, Falter refers to them as "appendages." While this is technically true, and was probably initially meant to be an example of artistic license, it just gets irritating. Referencing the wings as such a few times is fine. But when I can count on one hand the number of times the word "wings" us used in a 300+ page novel? That's a problem, and it seems like Falter is trying way too hard.
As for the inconsistency. Remember way back in the first book when Eran mentioned his special skill is the ability to manipulate any metal? Apparently it's only good for opening Maggie's door for late night rendezvous. Because Eran gets into more than one scrape with someone who uses metal weapons and booby traps. And he gets hurt by them. Doesn't really seem like much of a gift if he can't use it in a fight. They even go so far as to lock Eran in a stone prison cell so that he can't break out. And yet, this skill that our fearsome hero has, is essentially useless. This irritated me more than anything else in the series, because so many problems could have been avoided if it were used the way it should have been. His gift becomes one of convenience for Falter to employ whenever it makes things easy, and to forget about when there is supposed to be tension or danger.
These problems are large, in the grand scheme of the book. They're distracting. But they are not insurmountable. The rest of the plot does a pretty good job of keeping the reader from caring too much. Truly. Getting to visit the past lives of the Fallen were some of the best moments of the series, even better than revisiting Maggie and Eran's past lives. And the end is really, truly, a happy ending, and yet the reader still understands that it isn't over forever, simply by the nature of human beings. It ties everything up in a little bow, but one that isn't too neat.
-Kayla
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