Setelah mengalami kegalauan dan geregetan dan sesuatu yang pengen banget di keluarin. Akhirnya baru sempet bikin review (sebenernya ketiduran juga sih wkwkkw :P)

Oke. Pertama gw pengen neriakin sesuatu.

Kenapa Ferrin mati?! Astaga serius. gw udah suka banget sama Ferrin walaupun dia tue tapi gatau ya, setiap naratornya Rachel, gw selalu pengen banget ngeliat Ferrin beraksi. kata-katanya, beh. Udah deh, gw aja lebih suka sosok Ferrin ketimbang Jason. Habis sosoknya mengingatkan gw dengan Leo Valdes di HOO. Yeps, menyembunyikan rasa sakit dengan humor. ha ha ha. Dan gw sebel banget sama kaum Amar Kabal.

Dan yang kedua, gw pengen neriakin.

Kenapa Drake mati?! Astaga juga. Dia itu yang bikin rame di bagian naratornya Jason. Gw suka banget ngeliat dia berantem mulu sama Farfalee. Dan serius, gw nangis sampe lebay. Biasanya kalo cerita fantasi begini gw nangisnya ga sampe lebay begini. Tapi ini ... tapi ini.. kayaknya mata gw masih bengkak deh

dari kedua tokoh di atas, gw sangat menyayangkan mereka mati.
Dan sebuah kejutan banget kalo Aram ga mati. Padahal dia kayak udah optimis mati deh. Tapi gpp deh. Aram kan keren. wkwkwk

Dari semenjak buku pertama Brandon Mull. Yang pertama kali gw baca adalah bagian Terimakasih #gubrak. Serius, gw suka banget baca bagian Terimakasih di novel-novel. Gatau deh intinya apa, cuman suka aja. ha ha ha. Dan di buku 3 yang kata Brandon bakalan bikin buku baru lagi, gw curiga itu tentang anaknya Jason *usap usap dagu* Itu gara-gara suratnya Darian yang sok mistis!

Ini buku berkesan banget. Banyak makna. Banyak pelajaran yang bisa dipetik. Dan yeah. Seru banget. Gw aja ngabisin setengah buku terakhir dalam satu hari (setengah buku pertama 4 hari)

Acknowledgement: it's been at least four years since I read "Beyonders" #1 & 2. I remember little.

I really did not like this book. I just didn't. The characters are entertaining enough, the setting interesting enough, the basic story fun enough; but there were so many things that bothered me about it.

First of all, the sentence structure. I'm a literary nerd. I can't help but notice sentence structure--and honestly, anyone who reads at all notices sentence structure, even if they wouldn't name it. And the sentence structure in Chasing the Prophecy was awful! So many sentences whose only punctuation was a period at the end. So many sentences with only one comma to splice it up. As a result, every paragraph longer than two sentences felt abrupt, chunky, uncomfortable. All I wanted were a few semicolons; maybe even an exclamation point! Or a colon: Those make reading flow. But no. :(

Second, the mindless killing. So many people die, and no one seems to feel at all bad about killing anyone else, not even the supposedly "good" characters (I say supposedly because a complete lack of empathy is a little concerning and not usually a thing that makes people "good"). They kill people left and right, lord and servant, random and familiar. And seriously; no analysis of whether that's a problem. It's just "they are evil, we are good"; which is my least favorite justification for nearly everything in the world because any side of any argument can hold that belief--and who's to say which side is actually good and which evil?

Third--and this point is my biggest holdup, and is tied to the second--there was no consideration that maybe the "evil" guys weren't so evil. This despite the fact that two individuals listed in this book as on the "good" side come from groups otherwise considered to be on the evil side. Both giants and displacers are uniformly considered to be awful and terrible; yet Aram and Ferrin are considered allies by our protagonists. Despite this allyship, no one stops to wonder if other giants and displacers might switch sides if given the chance, or to wonder if they are part of the war that takes place throughout the book by choice or by force. That seems like a pretty big lapse in judgement, especially when it ends with mass killing.

And then, after all that, it turns out the entire species once considered evil are actually only pawns, and that's totally acceptable; yet the displacers and giants are still killed without thought. This is probably because that other enemy has cool telepathy powers, making them considered at a higher level than the others.

Can we talk about how that sounds a hell of a lot like racism? Or something else awful. Either way, it's icky. Icky icky icky. Ew. Just--not cool. If one individual from a group you've long considered evil turns out to be ok, MAYBE YOU SHOULD STOP AND WONDER IF THE REST OF THE GROUP MIGHT BE OK TOO. Don't hit me with this "tokenism" crap where that ok character is a random anomaly not worth investigating. Don't. Ew.

So, yeah, entertaining enough, but also really gross in some ways? and the sentence structure was frustrating. I had a hard time with this one.

Reread: December 2018

This was such a solid book, and a fantastic conclusion to the series. Brandon Mull truly did not shy away from the casualties of war. The only reason the rating dropped from a 5 to a 4 is because there were just a few things that astonished me the first time around, but I remembered them this time so it didn’t have quite the same impact. Still, this is a fantastic series. Definitely recommend.