We reviewed The Heart of Betrayal not too long ago, so we decided the last book needed to be read soon after that. After having quite a lot of time between the first two books, it’s easy to forget things. This is the last book and we didn’t want that to happen again.

The Beauty of Darkness is the third book in The Remnant Chronicles. Lia has survived Venda—but so has a great evil bent on the destruction of Morrighan. And only Lia can stop it.

With war on the horizon, Lia has no choice but to assume her role as First Daughter, as soldier—as leader. While she struggles to reach Morrighan and warn them, she finds herself at cross-purposes with Rafe and suspicious of Kaden, who has hunted her down.

In this conclusion to the Remnant Chronicles trilogy, traitors must be rooted out, sacrifices must be made, and impossible odds must be overcome as the future of every kingdom hangs in the balance.

Cover

Candyce: I have to say after reading this book the cover fits this book perfectly. I love the colors as well.

Isabelle: The cover fits the other two very well and as Candyce said, it works well with story. I love the colors and there are quite some details to be found in the background.

“It was only me, a thousand blinking stars, and the beauty of darkness stretched to the ends of the universe, snuffing out the endless games of courts and kingdoms.”

Plot

Candyce: The ending of the trilogy wasn’t what I expected it to be. It took me quite awhile to read, but not because it was boring. It wasn’t really a book that called to me and made me want to continue reading. There is a lot of travel and talking in the first part of the book. This was really interesting, but I think it took too long. I can’t really pinpoint something that should’ve been left out, but that’s just how it feels. I still loved the switch of POVs when it came to Kaden, Rafe, Lia and Pauline. I think at times I would’ve loved to read more from Kaden or Rafe’s POV. Especially after Rafe let Lia go. Sometimes I feel like we didn’t get enough of an idea what he was doing. I know I said some of the story should have been shorter, I do think this would’ve added to it as well. It felt like he just appeared before the big battle. I loved how the kingdoms came together and wanted to fight for each other. A lot of people loved this book and gave it five stars, but that doesn’t feel right to me. The ending of the book kind of seemed too easy. Through the whole trilogy they speak of the sacrifices Lia will have to make, but I didn’t really see this in the book. I loved that the battle constantly switched between the three main characters. This made it so much more interesting. I don’t agree with the end though. Once again, way too easy. It didn’t seem to fit with previous events. Unfortuantely I can’t say too much without spoiling, haha.

Isabelle: Once again it took me about half the book to get into the story. I wasn’t really invested and it took me like 2 weeks to finish the book, which is pretty long for me. After some action pretty soon in the book it was just travel and talk and travel in the first half. And while it wasn’t exactly boring it wasn’t super interesting either. If this wasn’t a buddy read I probably would have put down the book in favor of another one pretty quickly to be honest. The whole book was just too long in my opinion with not enough happening in the first half. Once I finally read that first half I went through the rest in 2 days haha. I actually did like the battle, there was a lot happening and the POV switch was really well done. This way you knew what was going on everywhere on the battle field. But like Candyce said, while people died, I can’t say Lia really had to sacrifice that much. I would have been okay with all that were it not for the last chapter. That last chapter was way too much of an ‘and now everything is perfectly okay’ and it was just way too easy. It really annoyed me and that was pretty disappointing for such an entertaining series. All in all I enjoyed most of these books but it took me too long to get hooked by the second and third one and like I said, the last chapter was extremely disappointing.

 

“Truth is as free as the air and we all have the right to breathe as deeply of it as we wish. It cannot be held back in the palm of any one man.”

Characters

Candyce: Lia changed a lot during these books and in a very positive way in my opinion. What started out as running away from her wedding, turned into her fighting for her people and others who really need the help. She became selfish when need be, but also very selfless. At times it was still very clear she is young. Her arguments with Kaden or Rafe could be childish at times or how she went about getting things done. At other times, she doubted her own abilities a bit too much. Lia is so much stronger than she thinks. While I didn’t agree with all of her choices, I think the ending of this trilogy was where she was supposed to be. Kaden started off as a very annoying character to me, but I grew to love him. The Heart of Betrayal really opened my eyes when it comes to Kaden. He experienced so much a little kid should never have to face, it’s very understandable that he turned out the way he did. Kaden had a very big heart and really started thinking more for himself in this book. He realized he hurt many people and tried making up for it. I’m happy he got his happily ever after. Rafe is a character I love and hate, haha. I think there is more to him than we got to see in these three books. I would’ve loved to have had more chapters from his POV. I think I feel this way with him, because I just don’t know enough. If that makes any sense. I have to say he acted very brave after all of the tragedy he faced after getting back to his own kingdom. In other ways he didn’t think of himself at all, when he made certain decisions to help others. I liked him in the end, but still wish I knew more about him.

Isabelle: I’m not completely sure what to make of Lia, she changed a lot and most of it was definitely for the better.She cared a lot about everyone and wouldn’t just save herself or her own country. She wanted to save everyone and did what she needed to do. However she was also a bit demeaning to others at times and happy to finally show her strength, a bit too happy at times. In the end I think she made the right choices.

I liked Kaden more and more and I liked where his character ended up a lot. I do think it al happened a bit too easily but at the same time I really enjoyed what went on. I think he deserved what he got.

Rafe is a pretty difficult character to talk about, while I shipped him and Lia from the start I was quite disappointed with his development. Or better, lack thereof. As Candyce said, you just don’t know that much about him and while there’s more of a story in this book for him than in the others I still feel like we hardly get to know him. His choices were the right ones in the end, even if it took him a while to get there. He was just so annoying in the first half of the book, not letting Lia do anything at all even though she kept them alive in Venda.

There are a lot of secondary characters and I was happy we got to see so many of them. I really enjoyed them and was sad for the one that didn’t make it to the finish line. In regards to them I would’ve liked to see more, I wouldn’t mind extra pages reading about Jeb, Pauline, or Berdi for example. That was probably the only thing I liked about the last chapter, a lot of the secondary characters were mentioned, so you know what had become of them as well.

“I realized there were assumptions we made about people, and once we did, that was all we could see”

This was a good trilogy, but just not exactly what we expected. Have you read this trilogy? What did you think?