4.5 ⭐️
WOW! what a finish! this was a great way to cap off this series! (epilogue = sex scene? not exactly the norm but you know i’ll take it ;))
i thought this was really good! i had 3 quote unquote issues with it overall (hence the -.5 star) but other than them it was super!
one thing that kind of stuck out to me in a bad way was the antagonist. i didn’t really love who they chose as the antagonist. i wish it had been someone with a connection to the rest of the characters so that it had more of an emotional payoff and acted as a mystery with which character we’ve met that it could be. also, i thought the antagonist's motive was really weak. it was super stereotypical and not all that complex. making it more unique would have been better. as time has passed since i've read this, i have become very passionate about this.
this is my official pitch for this book in terms of the antagonist: it should've been her dad. it should've been her fucking dad. there was so much potential for this to be good. let's say elliot's dad daniel is an unpredictable. he grew up in a super restrictive household where they drilled magical racism against unpredictables into his brain since birth. he discovers he is an unpredictable himself once his powers come in. he has internalized racism towards his unpredictable magic and is super ashamed of himself as a result. he's able to keep this a secret from his family at first, but then they find out and disown him. he hates unpredictable magic since it ruined his life in this way and wants to distance himself from the community as much as possible. his power is that he has the ability to sense out other mage's powers before they display them. he marries elliot's mom and they have her and maddy. he keeps his unpredictable powers a secret from his wife and children too. even well before elliot's powers come in, he is able to sense that she is an unpredictable. he is horrified that he passed down this part of himself that he believes to be so insanely shameful and abhorrent to her, so he leaves them in order to continue distancing himself from unpredictable magic. this feels especially necessary to him in this case since elliot is a constant reminder of not only unpredictables in general, but also his status as an unpredictable. he doesn't want to be associated with her for this reason. the sinclair girls obviously don't know this is the reason he left, so they assume he's just a terrible man who abandoned his family. elliot sees her mom struggle on her own with the two of them, plus becomes a victim of eldest daughter syndrome by having to be a second mother to maddy once she dies, causing her to hate her father for leaving - understandably and as she should. the story plays out as normal after this, until daniel shows up at the academy on an assignment to investigate the unusual happenings going on there and tries to reconnect with elliot. in my version, he sees this as a ‘final test’ for unpredictables to be redeemed in his eyes. he also does this because even while being disgusted with the fact that elliot is hereditarily unpredictable because of him, he regrets not trying to have a relationship with his own daughter for something out of her control. maddy, a 'normal' water bender, is willing to try and forgive him as she was very young when he left and didn't fully feel the impact of his abandonment, plus is just a very sensitive and compassionate person, but elliot is having none of it. she resents him tremendously and refuses to forgive him. this impertinence from elliot acts as daniel's final straw; since his unpredictable daughter wants nothing to do with him, he has no reason to have mercy for unpredictables any longer and now all bets are off. elliot is his offspring who shares his unpredictable magic due to his genetics and she rejected him vehemently; he sees this as reinforcement of his idea that he is a shameful disgrace. now, this is true due to his actions, but he relates it back to his unpredictable magic. he is so angered by elliot's dismissal of him, the shame from it that he holds towards himself, and the general racism he has towards unpredictables as a social group, that he formulates an evil plan to eradicate all unpredictables. the rest of the story would play out the same as how it did in the actual books, but with daniel in the place of augustin. now elliot and co. have an emotional attachment to the antagonist and the antagonist has actual reasons for doing what he is doing rather than just 'i want world domination because i just do'. it would cause internal suffering within elliot as she would have inappropriate guilt over believing she could've prevented all this drama by just giving her dad another chance even though she didn't know that would've prevented all of this. it also gives elliot more complexity since she has to grapple with the idea of killing her own dad. yeah she hates him, but that’s still a hard decision, especially since maddy might feel bad about that. the ending would play out the same as well but this time would be even more satisfying since daniel's downfall would come at the hands of elliot and her harem - all of whom are unpredictables. the thing he was trying to destroy is the very thing that destroys him. i'm not a writer or anything and this might not be amazing, but it still would've been better than augustin 🙄
most of the beginning and the middle of this kinda dragged a weeeeeeee bit, so that could have been better. although the end was action packed, so that made up for it.
also i kind of wish we had gotten to see how other characters had ended up after the story ended in the epilogue. you know i love the direction they chose, (^ wink wink ^), but it would have been nice to just get an idea of what happened to everyone else. it’s a 6 book series, you get attached to them, ya know?
other than these things, i enjoyed all the other aspects of this. things came up that kept it super interesting and it was fun to follow how this resolution was gonna go down.
so yeah, this was a super fun series! magical world saving and orgys, where can you go wrong?? ✨🫦