Black Key

The concluding novel of the Lone City trilogy (except there now also appear to be various novellas telling side stories throughout the trilogy timeline, if you want even more). This wraps up Violet's story as the rebellion reaches its final climax, Violet's sister Hazel is kidnapped and forced to take Violet's place as the Duchess's surrogate, and Violet goes back undercover to try and rescue Hazel.

Things I liked: the setting remains interesting though still highly reminiscent of the Hunger Games. Violet is NOT a "I can do it all alone with my inexplicably mightly magical powers" type of heroine; she rightly realizes that although her magic is strong, she can NOT be the lone magic user saving the day, and so spends a good part of the book enlisting the help of other surrogates she can teach also. She also demonstrates the value of compassion, and other characters call out how they'd initially just been in the revolution for revenge, but Violet's continuing focus on saving everyday lives reminded them what it's all really about. So that's a nice change too.

Things i didn't like: at several points in the trilogy a character does something dumb which results in something bad happening to other people. The character's friend immediately reassure that person "you didn't do the bad thing, the other people did". It seems to rather dismiss the element of personal responsibility. Yes, ultimately, bad people did the bad thing, but the character who took the initial action still acted irresponsibly and should have known better, and yes, probably SHOULD take some responsibility. The deep and abiding love between Violet and Ash remains fairly juvenile and inexplicable, though maybe that's just a hazard of YA territory. And the treatment of the various traumas that the surrogates are put through does seem very lightly brushed off in many cases - it's essentially repeated rape, but is never dealt with as such and is in fact not dealt with much at all. Again, perhaps this is because YA book but it still doesn't feel right to me. And finally, the trilogy is all about the glorious revolution but nobody actually seems to have thought through what will actually HAPPEN during/after the revolution apart from murdering all the nobles - no planning about what would make a better structure, who would rule/govern, etc., and this just sort of mysteriously sorts itself out which seems HIGHLY improbable if the actual revolutions we've seen in the real world are anything to judge by.

Overall a quick and easy read with a few interesting details and a small amount of character growth which is always nice to see. Nothing really hugely surprising, and the bad guys tend towards being madly cackling stereotypes of villains with only a cursory effort to give them some kind of sympathetic back story. The ending wrap up is a bit deus ex machina - magic fixes everything - although I've seen worse, but it also could have been a bit better. Would have been nice to actually see the companions play a bigger and more important role in the finale, for example. Would have liked more about what happened to Carnelian. And Violet goes into the final confrontation like a completely unprepared idiot, tbh. Anyway, pick it up for a YA beach read and enjoy.