Format: Hardcover, 480 pages
Release Date: March 5, 2019
Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire
Source: Publisher
Genre: Young Adult / Fantasy / Wizards & Witches
The Shadowglass is the third and final installment in author Rin Chupeco's The Bone Witch trilogy. This captivating fantasy series features Persian and Asian influences, while focusing on witches, curses, and resurrection. In the Eight Kingdoms, none have greater strength or influence than the
asha, who hold elemental magic. But only a bone witch has the power to
raise the dead. Tea of the Embers has used this dark magic to breathe life into those
she has loved and lost...and those who would join her army against the
deceitful royals. But Tea's quest to conjure a shadowglass, to achieve
immortality for the one person she loves most in the world, threatens to
consume her.
Tea's heartsglass only grows darker with each new betrayal. Her work
with the monstrous azi, her thirst for retribution, her desire to unmask
the Faceless—they all feed the darkrot that is gradually consuming her
heartsglass. She is haunted by blackouts and strange visions, and when
she wakes with blood on her hands, Tea must answer to a power greater
than the elder asha or even her conscience. Tea's life—and the fate of
the kingdoms—hangs in the balance. Tea is
on the brink of doing something either
extraordinary brave, or remarkably stupid. She will either survive to
have her revenge on her betrayers and the Faceless, or go down in flames
in the most public way possible since everyone is now paying close attention to her.
This third book once again alternatives between the mysterious Bard (the person who is recording the events of
the Bone Witch’s life in current time) and of Tea’s perspective of her
past life and the events that have led up to where we are now. It's funny in a way how the author uses this format to tell her story. The first being that you really have no clue who the Bard is but you do get some sort of hints along the way that he is someone of importance who left his old life behind to follow Tea from one end of the world to the other.
Plus, with the Bard's side, you get to see the other characters like Fox, Inessa, Likh, Khalad etc who are trying to stop Tea from doing whatever she has planned. Readers have followed Tea from the point where she found out who she really is, to becoming an asha, to understanding how powerful she really can be, to facing so much pain and suffering for someone so young. Her present self's villainy is so filled with sorrow and sadness,
that you can't help but empathize with her.
Much like the bard, we find
ourselves cheering for her, even when the present tells us we shouldn't. While everyone else in her life, including her brother Fox, Princess Inessa, and her friends among the asha, were trying to stop her, there was only one man who stood with her. That person is Lord Kalin. I adored the romance between Tea and Kalin. From the moment they met they despised each other, but grew to be an unstoppable team. Even with all the trials and tribulations and the betrayals and the heart breaks, Tea has never wavered in her love for Kalin going as far as doing the impossible.
This
series catches the imagination with a very creative world, and
secondary characters who are key to events that play out. There are
similarities between this book and Memoirs of a Geisha. After all, each
asha is trained in various studies from fighting, to dancing &
singing, to dining with famous and influential men. Got to be honest. I am still not sure how where my rating should be after reading the final page and seeing others being happy and getting while they wanted, while Tea will always be the villain who tried to save the world.
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