Friday, April 6, 2018

Friday #Review - These Vengeful Souls by Tarun Shanker, Kelly Zekas #YALit #Historical

Series: These Vicious Masks (#3)
Format: Paperback, 304 pages
Release Date: February 20, 2018
Publisher: Swoon Reads
Source: Library
Genre: Young Adult / Fantasy / Historical

Evelyn and her friends navigate tense battles, stunning revelations, and the limits of their own powers in this thrilling conclusion to the These Vicious Masks trilogy.


England, 1883. On the run with the grieving Sebastian Braddock, Evelyn wants two things: to be reunited with her friends, and to get revenge on the evil Captain Goode. Not only has he misused his and Sebastian’s powers to rack up a terrible death toll, but he's also completely destroyed any hope of Evelyn or her friends regaining the life they once knew. Evelyn is determined to make Captain Goode pay for what he's done, but is her revenge worth risking the lives of Sebastian and her friends? Or is it better to flee the city and focus on staying alive? And with the Captain spreading lies about Sebastian in an attempt to flush them out of hiding and turn the populace against them, does she even have a choice at all?




These Vengeful Souls is the third and final installment in co-authors Tarun Shanker & Kelly Zekas These Vicious Masks trilogy. Picking up 3 days after the horrific ending to These Ruthless Deeds, things are looking pretty bleak for Evelyn, & her friends (Sebastian Braddock, Nicholas Kent, Rose Wyndham, Catherine Harding, Miss Chen, Laura Kent, Emily Kane, & Radhika Rao)Evelyn, who made a life or death choice in the previous novel, is now in the fight of her life against Captain Goode & his Society of Aberrations allies. 

Goode's message has been sent in a most horrific manner: Disobey the Society and there will be consequences. What will he do next to make Evelyn pay for her treachery? Will Evelyn flee to other parts of the continent, or will she stand and fight? This then becomes a fight for life, and a desire for vengeance against Goode after a series of events forces Evelyn's hands. One can only be pushed so far before they break. It may take Evelyn a bit of time to come to her senses on how to get things done, but don't ever count Evelyn's desire to save her friends. Especially Sebastian who she has fallen deeply for and doesn't want anything especially heinous to happen to him. 

In this world, people have superhuman abilities like healing, the power to charm people to love them, control over the weather, teleportation, changing a person's appearance, getting people to truthfully answer any question, the power to dream of other powered people anywhere in the world, and the ability to see the future. The downside to this comes in the form of Captain Goode who can raise a person's powers or shut them down. Evelyn and Sebastian's powers are polar opposites. When they are together, they cancel each other out. Apart, Braddock can slowly make someone sick or kill them. 

One of the downsides to this story is shockingly Evelyn herself. She is too rash, she makes silly choices, becomes too consumed with hatred and revenge that she nearly loses who she is as well as the people she is trying to protect.
Thankfully, the ending makes up for the misguided choices she had made up to that point. That could also describe Sebastian's desire to sacrifice himself for the good of the world, or something silly. The cast of characters grows in this book. This is sort of like the X-Men under Wolverine meets the X-Men under Magneto. Kent deserves a medal for everything he has had to put up from both Evelyn, Sebastian, and Goode. There is a particularly curious romance that appears in this story. Yet, I don't find myself jumping up and down over it. I find that adding the romance to the story took away from the story itself. 




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