“Agatha blushed with love. Sophie. Her knight in shining armor. Sophie, who’d broken herself to heal her best friend. Sophie, who’d found the Good in her, even when Agatha thought herself Evil. Her friend was never a witch. Just like Agatha wasn’t a princess. They were both, always both, the line between princess and witch as thin as the line between stories and real life.”
While I don’t think that I will ever consider The Camelot
Years trilogy as good as the original School for Good and Evil trilogy,
I did find One True King to be a very good book and an overall satisfying
conclusion to the series.
As always, the thing that I loved the most about this book were
the characters, as well as the growth that they all went through. Both Sophie
and Agatha had to go through so much and came out stronger by the end of it. In
particular, I loved how Sophie was finally able to accept herself and realize
that she is worthy of good things and relax a bit and enjoy life a bit more.
While this book was really good and while I did love it, I
also had a couple of issues with it. First off, Tedros was insanely frustrating
in this book. While I’ve never outright hated him as a character, I’ve definitely
stuck to and loved these books due to Agatha and Sophie as main characters.
Therefore, I was just kind of meh about the fact that Tedros played such
a central role in this book. I generally would have loved to see more Sophie/Agatha
being badass together action, rather than them being separated for a great
chunk of the story.
Second of all, I really do think that some of the things
that Tedros was thinking/feeling was slightly demeaning towards Agatha and dare
I say …sexist? He feels like he has to “step up” and act like a king, and not let
“his princess get in his way” (as he puts it). This genuinely pissed me off,
since Agatha’s ideas and plans usually always worked out a lot better than his.
His sexist thoughts and comments were just really annoying. While I do know
that he ended up growing past all of that, I wish that these things would have
been addressed as wrong by the end of the story. Throughout a large portion of
this book, I was actually genuinely hoping that Agatha would become an actual
contestant for the crown and eventually become king. Both Sophie and Agatha are
just such a powerful duo and two massive forces to be reckoned with. I kind of
wished that they would not have been pushed so far into the background of the
action and had more central roles, like in the original trilogy. I mean, I’m
not saying I hate Tedros, but if Tedros would have ended up dying, with Agatha and
Sophie ruling together in the end, I would have not been sad by that at all.
Just sayin’.
“Here she goes again,” Tedros said. “Thinking."
“A revelation to you, I imagine,” said Sophie.
It was also awesome seeing the Coven together again, going
on adventures. Dot was majorly adorable as always, and I literally squealed in
happiness at the semi-confirmed romantic relationship hinted at between Anadil
and Hester at the end of the book.
And Sophie, oh my. I just love her so much. She
is by far the most badass, awesome witch of the entire series. Stealing the pearl,
belly dancing like a goddess queen, almost killing Japeth with her deadly
scream. She is just beyond awesome. The fact that she ended up getting a
Happily Ever After with Hort was just the cherry on top. While I would have
liked to see Hort and Sophie getting together in the previous books, I didn’t
ever ship them that much. However, by the end of this book, my heart was
just entirely broken at the prospect of Hort having truly died. I was really
happy when he turned out to still be alive. Sophie really deserves the very
best, and Hort is definitely the perfect Ever After for her!
“But a wall is a challenge. Put a wall in front of a witch and she’ll find her way past it.”
“You’re my real family, you know,” Dot said softly to her friends. “And I know I’m a part of yours too. Even if you act like I’m not. Even if you two pretend you don’t need me. A coven is three. It has to be three. Because I’d be so lonely without you.”
And aargh the eleven knights all being women was just so badass.
A big yes for the blatant feminism in this series!
“No, I needed to find better knights to fight Japeth this time, equipped with more than weapons or brute strength. Knights who had a stake in this war. Knights who knew the depths of love and loss. Knights who would persist until the end.” Jacinda looked around the table. “Such knights wouldn’t be found amongst men.”
“On the contrary.” Jacinda sat taller. “True, we cannot win the second test for Tedros. Surviving the death warrant hung on his princess is his quest alone. But there are other weapon we have to defeat the Snake. Cleverness. Resilience. Insight. Weapons that a woman wields far better than a man. It is why we wear the armor of the Eleven now.”
Overall, I’m really happy with the conclusion of this
series. I do think that one has to read this trilogy as a separate series from
the first three books, since they definitely deal with a wider array of characters
in the mix (e.g. Tedros) and so it makes sense for Sophie and Agatha’s stories
to be less intertwined as before. However, I did love this book and will
definitely reread the entire series sometime soon to get the full effect of the
conclusion of this book.
“White and black dresses coalesced, like the intermingling of two swans. The girls’ eyes locked, dark and light, an eternal connection made. Good and Evil. Boy and Girl. Old and Young. Truth and Lies. Past and Present.”
0 Comments