Then there’s Perry’s love for Roar, Brooke finally coming into her own. Roar and Perry, however, have some patching up to do, and ow my feels oMY POOR GRIEVING BABY. Aria and Roar, my favourite relationships in all the world, is still magnificent to behold.

I love how much this book focused on love and friendship. Like, I just lay down on my bed and held my kindle and sort of moaned in pain and happiness and mostly pain. This book is such an emotional experience, and yet it felt so satisfying at the end. There is heartbreak, betrayal, torture, loss, victory, pain, grief. I love series enders where people die (no, I’m not psychotic. The book moves along, gaining in intensity (always managing to find time for swoony scenes though, thank goodness). So they decide to go and get both things. For that they need hovers, and they need Cinder. To survive, they need to find the Still Blue, aka the area of the world beyond the sea that is free of Aether storms. Cinder has been captured by the combined forces of Hess and Sable (the evillest evil to ever evil), Aria is badly wounded, the rescued Dwellers are sick, Roar is still lost in grief, and Perry is stressing over how to save the Tides.

And coming fresh off the disasters at the end of TtEN–Reverie destroyed, the Tides seeking refuge from the ever-worsening Aether storms in the caves–makes the stakes in ItSB feel very high.

I got to watch the characters develop closely, and I never lost my investment or forgot world building details. UtNS posed a lot of questions, TtEN answered them while setting up a whole bunch of tense situations, and then ItSB delivered on every front. But reading them close together was amazing. Honestly, I couldn’t recommend going about it like that more, but I can understand that most people haven’t got that kind of reading stamina or the time (seriously, that was intense and exhausting and amazing, but I was destroyed afterwards). My experience with the Under the Never Sky was unique, considering I binge-read the entire thing in about three days. You want SO MUCH for your characters to end up happy, but you also don’t want it to end at all. You’re ready for them to break your heart. You go into them so ready, so in love with the characters, so invested in the plot. Review: Series enders are a strange mix of exciting and scary.

Into the Still Blue by Veronica Rossi