My rating: 5.5/10
I have to admit, I’m a
tad disappointed with how this series ended. The first three books just got
better and better with each subsequent novel, with Opal definitely being
the crowning jewel of the series and then all just went slightly downhill from
there. The world definitely expanded a lot from the fourth book, and didn’t
just revolve around high school, new powers and mean bullies. However, the characters
and the plot just did not really expanded along with the lore.
For one, the characters
still felt quite immature, which is completely fine if you’re writing
from a high-school-y, YA angsty perspective, and which is obviously also a
normal experience for a seventeen year old girl However, when you start putting
your protagonists in really high-stakes, world-shaking situations, I feel like
there has to be some growth or character development in order for the world-expansion
to feel organic.
Second, the plot itself
also didn’t really grow and mature in a way that felt harmonious to the enlarged
world. When there were only about 100 pages left in this book, I genuinely
could not imagine how the book was going to be wrapped up with a happily
ever after. The world was magnified to now include an invading Luxen army as
well as a new alliance between the Luxen and Arum. These concepts had only just
been dropped on the reader and from then onward could have spanned books in
order to resolve them properly. But instead, the ending was extremely rushed and
it feel like the added conflicts were resolved in an unsatisfactory and unrealistic
way.
I think Katy and Daemon
are very adorable, and I do think they fit well together. However, I am in
agreement with another reviewer that said that their relationship does mostly
revolve around feelings of lust and not love. They are still quite young, and
are obviously still in the beginning stages of discovering their love (as well
as new physical activities) with one another and this is totally normal. But I
do think that this series is trying to present them as this ride-or-die, forever
after, perfect, non-problematic couple and I just don’t think that showing them
as being all over each other 24/7 really fits that bill. Maybe I’m just
misreading their relationship, and I obviously always love a good steamy scene.
But I would have appreciated a few more scenes between the two of them that showed
their growth in love as a couple not just from a I-want-to-rip-your-clothes off
perspective. I think their relationship will still take a few years to mature
though.
Overall, I’m glad I
read the Lux series. I don’t think this is Jennifer L. Armentrout’s best
series ever (I absolutely adore her Covenant series) but it was still
overall quite enjoyable.
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