Reading With Tyler

Name: War Storm
Series: Red Queen #4
Author: Victoria Aveyard
Publisher: HarperTeen
Format: Kindle (through Kindle Unlimited)
Genres: Young Adult, Fantasy, Dystopia, Romance
Noted Tropes: None
Steam or Spice: None

Rating:

⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 3 out of 5.

Review:

War Storm is the final book in the Red Queen series – it’s all been leading up to this! There will be spoilers for the previous books in the series, and possibly War Storm, below.

The finale of the series follows multiple POVs (some new, and some are only around for a couple of chapters) as all sides of the war are finally clashing and we’re on route to find out who will be winning the crown of Norta and the plan after that… and it was… alright. I enjoyed some of the POVs more than others, Evangeline ended up being one of my favourite POVs (which was unexpected) and honestly I could have done without the boy’s POVs entirely. But our consistent POV throughout the series, was Mare.

Mare, in War Storm, has had so much thrown at her by this point that I fully expected her to be insufferable – she wasn’t. For as much as I wasn’t a fan of the romance sub-plot fighting to get to the surface again, I really enjoyed the fact that Mare was true to her cause and stuck to it. Rise, red as the dawn! And all that! I’m really proud of her for this. We’ve had to endure Mare’s torture, fear and loss along side her but I do believe that despite all of that Mare was a strong FMC and thankfully didn’t dip into ‘annoying and whiny’ for too long when it did happen.

Cal and Maven were a bit lacking in War Storm for my liking – but ever since the romantic sub plot started to die down, they have been a bit in the wind. I think this is possibly the first time I’ve been rooting for the FMC to end up alone at the end of it all? She’s too good for both the Princes! I really thought Maven had the potential to be a damn good character and I still don’t know if this was as the ultimate villain, or if they somehow managed to fix Elara’s tinkering (if such a Newblood existed)… but I was let down by his story – and it would seem a lot of others were too (I can’t help it – I absolutely stalk Goodreads once I finish a book to see if people agree with me!).

I am gutted to say that I am disappointed with the final book in this series. The first three books paced pretty well and there was enough action and plot that you were able to forgive the lack of romance in this supposed romantasy series. I think by the time we got to King’s Cage I had fully accepted that the romance was a sub-plot and I was happy to focus on the main plot because it was plotting! Sadly, by the time we reach War Storm, it was as if the author remembered that there was actual romance between these characters at one point and tried to shoe-horn it back in. But I was quite happy with the political intrigue and the war by this point! I just didn’t need the romance back (specifically Cal and Mare! Evangeline and Elaine as well as Davidson and Carmadon I love and wish we got more page time with them).

All in all, I enjoyed this series. I think it’s one of those that if I had read when I was younger I wouldn’t have liked the final two books because of the lack of romance and as an adult reading it I just couldn’t get past the weird pacing. Whilst War Storm is only receiving a 3 star review, I would give the series an over all 4 star rating. You can enjoy the series as a whole but have issues with a book or two, right?

“Change can be quick, or it can be slow. But the movement should always be forward”