Dreams of Gods & Monsters

To be honest, I was disappointed. It's not that this book is bad, because while it drags on with vague scenes and alternating POVs, I still enjoyed the story... until about 85% into the book.

The first problem I've encountered with this book is Eliza. She appeared so suddenly, without any explanation about who she is and why we're switching to her perspective. I understand that her identity had to be revealed later on, but that also made it hard to care about her. It doesn't help that Eliza's scenes kind of overshadowed Karou's stolen moments with Akiva, especially when the story began shifting more towards her and her secret.

Speaking of Karou and Akiva, what happened with the war between seraphim and chimaera? It went well up to the part where they finally took care of Jael, but the... development? new plot? “bigger picture”? that comes after that makes this whole issue look so trivial. The previous 2 books were all about building this up. Akiva and the empire. Karou and the resurrections. It used to be about them, their story, and the war of their people... and yet I feel like this new issue completely thwarted it and threw it out the window.

Well, to be fair, there were some hints about this too. It's just they were so subtle, and the development came out so suddenly it left me all ? ? ? WHAT. That's also why the resolution feels more like deus ex machina than anything else, and it makes me sad because the plot was good until then. When the scope expanded with the Stelians and Faerers revealed, I feel that the story lost its focus and fell all over the place. It's like the important things don't really matter anymore, and trivial, unknown things suddenly become important. There are moments when Karou and Akiva got shoved to the background to make room for all these stuff.

I wasn't satisfied with the ending either. They called it a “happy middle” and not a happy ending, but I'm not sure if I'm happy with it. What about the dream shared by Karou, Akiva, and Brimstone? While they did accomplish the "beginning" they wanted to make, but it felt unfinished and small because of the issue with the beasts. It's very underwhelming, but guess I can take comfort in Karou and Akiva's happiness.

At first I considered rating this 2-2.5 stars because the twist near the end left a bitter aftertaste, but my favorite couple happened in this book (Ziri and Liraz) and they're super adorable, so I bumped it up to 3 stars.