I recently finished reading War Storm by Victoria Aveyard. It was an amazing end to this series. This is a huge book (672 pages), but I read it in three days because I couldn’t put it down. Although the ending was quite fitting, I was sad to see the series end.
Because this is the fourth book in a series, this review may contain spoilers for the previous three books.
As the book begins, Mare and Cal have decided to part ways. Despite the fact that they obviously love each other, there are things that they can’t agree upon. Mare is dedicated to her cause of equality for reds and silvers, while Cal feels that becoming king is the best for both him and his country — even if it requires that he marry Evangeline.
Almost nobody wants Cal and Evangeline to get married. They don’t want to marry each other. Mare doesn’t want them to get married. Although Mare and Cal’s friends tend to be indifferent about the subject, they’re still a little annoyed with having to watch Mare and Cal moon over each other all the time. The only people that really want them to get married are Cal’s grandmother and Evangeline’s father, as a way to strengthen their alliance. That seems to be a recurring theme in real history as well though.
War Storm‘s extension of the world of the Red Queen series is outstanding. As the whole continent is at war now, we’re now dealing with characters from all over the place. We get to see more of Montfort in this book (whose allowance for same-sex marriage is tempting to Evangeline) as well as characters from the Lakelands.
This book seems to have a theme of what our destiny is, and whether we can make the choice to change things. Evangeline and Cal don’t seem to think that they have a choice in their futures, or even in the future of their nations. As the series comes to a close, they begin to realize that maybe they do have a choice after all.
The book’s ending was fitting. I thought it rang true to how the characters were behaving, especially in this last book. I finally didn’t mentally yell at the characters about how foolish their choices were. It may not be the ending that I would have chosen, but I thought it was the right ending. And I didn’t end up crying or throwing the book in frustration (yes, I’m still talking about Allegiant chapter 50).
I definitely recommend War Storm and the entire Red Queen series if you like fantasy, stories about equality, or just really good books in general. I was happy to find out how this series ended, yet sad to see it end at the same time.