In book 1 you fall in love with Gideon, and in book 2 Gideon is gone. Even deleted from memory. Eventually you fall in love with Harrow, so guess how much Harrow we get in book 3! Once again it's less than none. Is this a pattern? Is this series with non-stop death and skeletons possibly meant to make me think about loss?

Other than Gideon and Harrow, what else was good in the first two books? I guess skeletons, magic, and spaceships were cool. So those are also deleted. Thinking about loss yet?! Hope you like going to school in the projects! Just in case you thought that could be fun, let's delete your capacity to read and write and think complex thoughts. Perfect!

This violent approach to destroying everything the reader loves sounds funny, but it's a huge risk too. It only works if you can again invent a character to fall in love with and a great setting for them. Yep, that happens again. Nona is awesome.

The book is a bit of a slow start. Nothing happens in the first half. (You liked plot? No plot for you!) But Nona & friends are an interesting bunch, so even their everyday lives are pretty cool. The broken-down environment with some magic that nobody cares about and a huge monster looming above the city... Is this [b:Borne|31451186|Borne (Borne, #1)|Jeff VanderMeer|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1477487850l/31451186.SX50.jpg|48253660]? The dream sequences start out incomprehensible, but become a pretty exciting infodump very fast.

In all three books the ending was so quick and complex that I forgot them right away. I just finished book 3 and I couldn't tell you what happened beyond that they got to the Locked Tomb. The rest is a dream-like blur. I wonder if this is intended or I just didn't pay enough attention. Anyway, I can't wait for book 4! I hope it comes out this year.


Also on the topic of loss: Gideon is back. She's still talking smack and is kind of funny. But we see her through Nona's eyes now and all the charm is gone. The Gideon we loved is dead! It's her corpse walking. Fantastic work on that. But I'm still rooting for a true resurrection! All I want for book 4 is to just take the 3 characters we love, and put them on stage together! (Nona can be Alecto.)