Wow, I loved this series SO much from beginning to end!!! Teo and Ana's journey was so filled with adventure, romance, and most of all, faith in God. Books like this are SOOO underrated in our society!!! It actually even makes me kind of angry that amazing tales like this are barely even acknowledged because they are categorized as Christian, and the authors get so little recognition for their work because of this. Meanwhile, mainstream fantasy novels are increasingly filled with graphic sex, violence, weird gods, etc...and they get shot straight up to the top of the bestseller lists. I have loved reading epic high fantasy books ever since I read the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings many years ago, but sadly, there are so few to choose from now that don't glorify all kinds of immorality and even evil. This trilogy really was amazing in so many ways, too many to name, so I'll just name a few:
Amazing character growth and development...so many characters really come alive as they grow and change in wonderful ways throughout the series, especially of course, the main characters of Teo and Ana. Let me just say to the gals thinking of reading these books, Teo is literally every woman's dream man *sigh* haha!! He is a man of honor from the beginning, but he goes from being half hearted about the newly rediscovered Christian religion, to its greatest champion. I also really liked Ana's character, she is a wonderful mixture of femininity and vulnerability, but she also has an incredibly brave, kick-a** side to her as well...it was fun seeing her sassy side come out once in awhile too!
A few nitpicky things that annoyed me a little bit, (but aren't really that big of a deal in the scheme of how awesome this series was) were:
The constant mention of how beautiful Ana is, it must have been mentioned like 100 times, like we get it already ;-)...it also seemed like every woman in the books was described as being beautiful, I guess being average looking didn't appeal to the author when he was writing his female characters :-/.
Even though this is a medieval style society, modern words and phrases are randomly thrown in at times which was a little distracting- the author uses terms like "that's great!" and words like "gorgeous" etc...
A little weird and gross how it is hinted in the very beginning of the series that the princess Abeula (sorry if I misspell names, I listened to the audio version of these books), and Teo are sometime lovers, but at the end, we find out that they are half brother and sister?! Yuck. I mean, it's not like they knew, but still...Also, how does a woman give birth to twins who have two different fathers??? Like, is that even biologically possible?
At the ending of book 1, or at some point in book 2, I can't remember, Ana's house literally gets blown up by the command of the High Priestess. But, towards the end of book 3, Ana goes back to her hometown and visits her house and everything is the same?? I don't know, maybe I missed something...when listening to audio books sometimes your mind can wander and you miss a few details, so maybe at some point it was mentioned that her parents re-built their house exactly the same??
The main characters are in love for 3 years, so it's a little annoying and frustrating how Teo doesn't propose to Ana until the end of the last book. I mean, I know their future and even whether they would survive was uncertain, but shouldn't that have been even more of an incentive for them to get engaged or even married sooner, so that they could share as husband and wife the trials they were going through? Like I said above, I VERY much appreciated the morals, and Christian values portrayed in these books, I even loved it in fact, but I feel like the author took it a teensy bit overboard, like when Teo wouldn't even kiss Ana at the Springs for fear of slipping into sin, and then after waiting for 3 long books for them to FINALLY get married, we don't even get a little bit of sizzle or steaminess described on their wedding night. I don't know, it's almost like Christian and/or clean romance authors keep it TOO straight-laced when it comes to sexuality, but then secular authors play up the sexuality to a HUGE degree, and it's way TMI...why can't there be more books where it's more "middle of the road?"
At times, it just seemed like literally everyone was against the main characters and their fight to re-establish Christianity...there were SO many "bad guys," it was almost hard to keep track of them! The High Priestess and the Iron Shield (and all their lackeys), the Outsiders, the Rovers, the Exterminati, the Clansmen, the shamans, bad apples within their own ranks, like Ordo etc...etc...Not to mention that it seemed like almost every man Ana comes across wants to rape her...I wish there had been more descriptions of their allies, and even maybe more a "fellowship" type group like in the Lord of the Rings, instead of Teo and Ana basically having to orchestrate and save everything and everyone almost all of the time (others definitely helped, but SO much fell on their shoulders, it was crazy!)
Finally, Teo literally saves Ana's life like approx. about 12 times in these books, no joke. TRUST me, I absolutely love reading about heroic men saving their women, it's one of my favorite book themes, so I most definitely didn't dislike reading about all of Teo's rescues of Ana, but it was like EVERY single time she was in danger, Teo manages to show up and save her- I don't know, it just didn't feel very realistic.
Anyways, haha, that seems like a lot of negatives I just mentioned, but I'm just a "picky" person when it comes to books, so don't mind what I said too much...for I really and truly LOVED this series. It's truly wonderful and I'm feeling really sad right now that it's over! :-( Definitely a series well worth reading and highly underrated!!! Happy reading :-)