In the aftermath of Mortmain’s attack on the Institute, Tessa and her allies find themselves in a race to find him before factions within the Clave remove Charlotte and Henry as Heads of the Institute. However, even as they learn more about both Mortmain his plans, he appears to be one step ahead of them, and attacks from within threaten their attempts to stop him. If they wish to defeat their enemy, first they must figure out who has betrayed them.
Once again, I think that the reading experience suffered due to the fact that I’ve read a lot of YA, and I’m an adult. I can see myself eating a lot of this up as a teenager, though even then I really didn’t like love triangles. And once again, I found the main trio of the book and their love triangle the least interesting part of the story. While I appreciate the fact that we learn a lot more about them in this book, especially Will and why he’s the way he is, it didn’t make me care about them more. Will in particular is a character type who I just don’t like and often isn’t executed well. I get why he behaves horribly to just about everyone, but understanding his behavior doesn’t mean accepting it. I’ll give him as pass for when he was a child but not for his current actions. He only ever seems to show kindness to Tessa and Jem, and even then, he hurts them plenty too. He’s going to have to do a lot of groveling to redeem himself, and I’m not sure that’s something that can be believably pulled off. We’ll have to see what happens in the next book.
The strength of this series continues to be the world building and the side characters. And this particular book allowed many of them to shine. The ones that really stand out to me are Charlotte and Henry, who are in love with one another but each thinks that it’s a marriage for convenience for the other, Sophie, a maid in the household and Tessa’s friend, and Gideon, the son of one of the antagonists. Charlotte and Henry get a sweet subplot with a good resolution in this book while Gideon is a new addition. His character goes in some interesting directions that I did not expect, and I’ll be interested in seeing where he ends up in the story. Sophie had been present since the first book, but she’s taking more of a central role now, and that’s made for a good addition to the story.
I am invested in them and seeing what becomes of them, so I’ll be finishing the series. Three out of five stars.
CBR 16 Bingo – Dun Dun: The last paragraph of the book definitely brought a surprise for the characters.