What power can bruise the sky?
Two worlds are poised on the brink of a vicious war. By way of a staggering deception, Karou has taken control of the chimaera’s rebellion and is intent on steering its course away from dead-end vengeance. The future rests on her.
When the brutal angel emperor brings his army to the human world, Karou and Akiva are finally reunited–not in love, but in tentative alliance against their common enemy. It is a twisted version of their long-ago dream, and they begin to hope that it might forge a way forward for their people. And, perhaps, for themselves.
But with even bigger threats on the horizon, are Karou and Akiva strong enough to stand among the gods and monsters?
Trigger Warning: This book contains graphic scenes of violence
Dreams of Gods and Monsters is without a doubt, an excellent ending to an excellent series, but before I start fangirling reviewing this book, please note that this review might contain minor spoilers for those who have not yet read Daughter of Smoke and Bone and Days of Blood and Starlight. I highly recommend you read my review of those books first before you read this review.
Here’s what I enjoyed about this book:
World building (again): this time we get to explore the other side of Eretz, the home of the mysterious Stelians. The imagery is so vivid, and it truly shows how fantastical Taylor’s imagination is.
Excellent plot: I loved how everything ties together in the end, and how every single event that has been happening from the first book all leads to one final, intense climax.
Incredible character arcs (again): by the end of this final book, both Karou and Akiva grow so much. However, they are not the only characters who experience such development–Mik, Zuzana, Liraz and Ziri too grow so much during the course of the second and third books. Ziri is probably my favorite character in this entire trilogy even if he only makes his first appearance in the second book.
I loved Liraz’s slow, difficult but eventual transformation in particular, which was necessary to truly understand why it was so difficult for the seraphim and the chimaera armies to work together and start seeing each other as equals. The war changes both races here, but Taylor keeps things realistic by showing that while it is possible to eradicate racism, the process will be excruciatingly slow, and most likely won’t happen unless people are forced to unite to defeat a greater threat. (Frankly it kinda sucks to know that the apocalypse is what it will take for us to get over our prejudices but yeah that’s homosapiens for you).
Gripping, and suspenseful narration: Dreams of Gods and Monsters is quite a heavy and somewhat lengthy book, but Laini Taylor’s narration style was so gripping and full of suspense that it was impossible to put it down.
Now here is what I didn’t like.
I didn’t like the ending at all. A lot of revelations happen in this book that completely changes the direction the plot was going. And that’s not a bad thing at all. What’s bad is that all those revelations led to a rushed ending where the characters simply discuss their way into saving the universe(s). Taylor tells us how the characters become the saviors of the galaxies, and even the telling is done in a lazy manner that is completely unlike Taylor’s writing in the rest of the book. It felt like the author was forced to cram in the plot of a fourth novel into the third book, and in my personal opinion, I think this trilogy needed a fourth book–or atleast a spin-off novel–to accommodate the revelations that we discover in Dreams of Gods and Monsters and their implications.
I didn’t like the ending at all. A lot of revelations happen in this book that completely changes the direction the plot was going. And that’s not a bad thing at all. What’s bad is that all those revelations led to a rushed ending where the characters simply discuss their way into saving the universe(s). Taylor tells us how the characters become the saviors of the galaxies, and even the telling is done in a lazy manner that is completely unlike Taylor’s writing in the rest of the book. It felt like the author was forced to cram in the plot of a fourth novel into the third book, and in my personal opinion, I think this trilogy needed a fourth book–or atleast a spin-off novel–to accommodate the revelations that we discover in Dreams of Gods and Monsters and their implications.