
Review:
*I received an ecopy of this book via NetGalley. This has not influenced my review.*
The scope of this series widened in the second book, and this one continued with that thread, bringing everything to a satisfying close. It also shifted the main character focus again, kind of, this time to Oberon, Olivier, and Aurelia. I have to admit I was happy to have at least one half of the vampire duo back since I love vampires and Thierry and Olivier were both so interesting, but I also enjoyed getting to know Oberon better—he had an unexpected roughness that I hadn’t noticed when looking at him from the outside, but also a lot of inner strength.
The most surprising thing about this book for me was that it was Olivier’s redemption arc. I don’t know that I can say Olivier was really redeemed, in my opinion. Some of the things he’s done are irredeemable. But this was as close as someone like him can get, and I was honestly surprised at how much sympathy the author was able to make me feel for him and how much my feelings toward him did change. It doesn’t excuse anything he did, but when I learned more about his childhood, I truly felt terrible for him. And even if you’ve done things that are irredeemable, it’s still better late than never to start being a better person. I can always get behind a character admitting their wrongs and trying to change.
In addition to being about the whole Xadrak/Sinara feud and Olivier’s redemption, the book was also about forgiveness and moving forward without letting the cruel things you’ve experienced turn you into a cruel person yourself. Trigger/content warning for heavy focus on rape throughout the book, including some fairly explicit flashbacks.
There were also two new romantic relationships in this one. One of them was sudden, but I was happy for it nonetheless. *SPOILER* I kept thinking throughout Book 2 that Aurelia would be happier if she put aside her feelings for Hame and found someone for herself. I know she’s always had this duty to destroy Xadrak, but so has Hame, and he still managed to balance both his duty and love. So I’m glad she found someone. *END SPOILER* I’m not sure how I feel about the other though. *SPOILER* I just find it hard to believe and to feel comfortable with someone dating the person who brutally raped and nearly killed them. But the way things progressed in the story, including the supernatural elements that allowed them both to understand each other by literally experiencing each others’ memories, and the amount of change and remorse in Olivier, made it seem more believable than it would’ve been otherwise, albeit still something I’m not sure I’m comfortable with. Then again, it is fiction. I’ve never experienced anything like that though, so I feel like I’m not in a place to judge this aspect of the story. *END SPOILER*
Overall, this third and final book in the trilogy had great writing, a plot that kept me gripped, complex characters, and a lot of unexpected emotion, and I thought it was a satisfying ending to an enjoyable series full of vampires, witches, demons, vengeance, violence, and love.
*Even though this book is about different main characters than the previous ones, the stories are strongly connected, and you’ll probably be confused if you haven’t read them. I recommend reading in order, starting with Beckoning Blood.*
Recommended For:
Fans of Book 1 and 2 in Daniel de Lorne's Bonds of Blood series. Anyone who likes vampires, witches, and stories about forgiveness and redemption.
More Books in the Series:
Book Review: Beckoning Blood (Bonds of Blood Book 1) by Daniel de Lorne
Book Review: Burning Blood (Bonds of Blood Book 2) by Daniel de Lorne
Book Review: Binding Blood (Bonds of Blood Book 3) by Daniel de Lorne
Whenever I see the name “Aurelia” all I can hear is Colin Firth saying “Aurelia” in Love Actually.😁 Word associations are so weird!
I haven’t seen that movie, but it is funny how we make associations like that!
Weirdly I’m not getting a sense of vampires from the cover design. If I hadn’t read your review, I would have dismissed this as a certain type of romance novel whereas the whole trilogy appears to have a much greater dept of themes and characterisation.
All the covers in the series do look more romance than vampire, but they are largely focused on romance even though they do have a lot of other elements as well.
I’m glad to hear that this series ended on such a satisfying note for you. It does sound like a good one.
Thanks 🙂
I was anticipating this review because I saw you haul it in. I do like redemption arcs, but I also like when they are done halfway and don’t excuse everything. Because some things are irredeemable and I do think that at some points they did have bad intentions and not everything has to be neatly swept up. For example, I feel like the redemption arc in Shatter Me is overdone. We didn’t need an excuse for every single little wrong. If we got them for the big things alone I would’ve believed it more, but because EVERYTHING was cleaned up I didn’t even completely believe the redemption arc anymore …
Girl, don’t get me started on the Shatter Me series LOL. That annoyed me so much. Warner was so interesting to me in the first book, and then he got increasingly less interesting because everyone kept talking about how terrible he was, but then there was an explanation for everything. Everyone was still talking about how terrible he was, yet we never actually knew about anything terrible that he did. So yeah, I agree that redemption arcs work better when they’re done more realistically.