The Monk

The third and final in this series and pretty much everything that I loved about the rest of the books is amazingly absent in this one.

Firstly Kohar’s character is annoying in this book. In comparison to the others he isn’t so loud, forceful and bordering on control freak like he is in this book and it’s frustrating that no one, not once puts him in his place. Especially his younger brother, Taniel who is ten times the mage he is.

The plot in this one is predictable as well but more in the annoying sense. This one has Taniel spending the entire book crying about how everything is his fault. How he should just run away. How this is a problem only he can solve.

He’s equally as annoying as Kohar except for different reasons. The relationship in this one fits all the annoying tropes. After all of Taniel’s bemoaning about after he kills Vosgi he’s going to leave, which makes no sense. If his enemy, the one causing everyone the trouble that he’s blaming himself for the entire book, is gone, then the problem is gone. What is the point of running away then? If he was so distraught and self-loathing he should’ve left ages ago, even before the war in book two. There’s zero reason to run once the threat has been destroyed. In any case, after all of this a kidnapping happens and he, after making so many tracking spells with his brother turns into a mopey mess and takes them all off. Then he proceeds to kill the villain alone. Sigh. In this state how was he expecting to have the presence of mind to kill someone? Has he ever killed before? It was all sorts of unnecessary melodrama so when what happened to him happened it was hard to feel sorry for him.

That wasn’t the end of it. After this kidnapping, the victims family decide they are going to physically attack Taniel and blame it all on him because in the middle of war and with an entire village being taken down by magical fire this is the best thing to do. And then, in the final hour of the book, the author has the love interest not talking to his family for attacking Taniel. This is what the last pages are filled with.

After all the love I had for the first two books, this final instalment was swimming with most of the things they were blissfully lacking in. A hero who does nothing but cry about how everything is their fault and they are the only one to save the day. Unresolved and overly amped-up drama and tension between him and his brother that felt awkward and forced. Hero falling into an obvious trap because of all the self-loathing and being unprepared instead of taking help because, with all the help he had, why would using it make sense. And then the big, over dramatised ending scene these types of romances can’t seem to live without. Considering all of this, this story, out of the three, would’ve benefited the most from multiple POV’s because Taniel was mostly annoying and his brother equally so. It just didn’t have that smooth, mature feel without all the forced angst that the first two instalments had and that made the predictability of this one painfully noticeable. The writing around it wasn’t as much fun and clean and non-typical to what I expect from these stories.

All in all, I was pretty disappointed that it didn’t follow the same format of attacking adult problems and situations as the first two instalments did. Instead, it took the usually angsty routes and I just didn’t enjoy it that much. It was still a good book. But ultimately the ending was a letdown here and the story in its entirety was not written in a way I expected in comparison to the first two. I didn’t like the main character and I really disliked another character I previously liked. It just did not live up to expectations.