Monday, April 13, 2015

Lynburn Legacy #3: Unmade Review

Unmade by Sarah Rees Brennan


Title: Unmade
Author: Sarah Rees Brennan
Series: Lynburn Legacy #3
Publisher: Random House
Publication Date: September 23, 2014
Genre: Fantasy; Gothic; Romance; Fiction; Contemporary; Supernatural; Young Adult
Pages: 384
Format: Hardback
A modern, magical twist on the Gothic romance and girl detective genres, the Lynburn Legacy books will appeal to fans of both Beautiful Creatures and the Mortal Instruments series.
 
Powerful love comes with a price. Who will be the sacrifice?

Kami has lost the boy she loves, is tied to a boy she does not, and faces an enemy more powerful than ever before. With Jared missing for months and presumed dead, Kami must rely on her new magical link with Ash for the strength to face the evil spreading through her town.

Rob Lynburn is now the master of Sorry-in-the-Vale, and he demands a death. Kami will use every tool at her disposal to stop him. Together with Rusty, Angela, and Holly, she uncovers a secret that might be the key to saving the town. But with knowledge comes responsibility—and a painful choice. A choice that will risk not only Kami’s life, but also the lives of those she loves most.
 
As coauthor with Cassandra Clare of the bestselling Bane Chronicles, Sarah Rees Brennan has mastered the art of the page-turner. This final book in the Lynburn Legacy is a wild, entertaining ride from beginning to shocking end.





Brennan, I had such high hopes. You have an idea for a fantastic series, you write an amazing book, a slightly underwhelming sequel, and then this? Seriously, what happened?

Jared has, once again, gotten himself stuck in a mighty difficult hole to dig himself out of. Kami, fettered with magical ties to the wrong boy (why she doesn’t just cut them, I don’t know; there is literally no reason for them to continue to be stuck together, and yet, they still are) must for the ten thousandth time save Jared’s suicidal ass. Rob Lynburn, like the good little evil villain he is, terrorizes the town and is strangely placated and not at all hostile. He could do so much worse, and why he doesn’t, I am again unsure. As protocol calls for, Kami and all of her friends wade through obstacle after terrible obstacle. As this magical and gothic series comes to a close, a totally predictable battle scene leaves one force victorious and the other entirely destroyed in this not-really-epic conclusion of the Lynburn Legacy.

If you can’t already tell, I was entirely unimpressed with this disappointing and seemingly rushed conclusion to a series that was once one of my favorites. In the summary, the tagline reads “Powerful love comes with a price. Who will be the sacrifice?” I can answer that: the readers. The readers are to be sacrifices along with the quality of this gothic romance.

One of the best things in this series had utterly departed in this conclusion. The humor, the thing that made this whole series worth it, was gone. Vanished. Nowhere to be found. In the first book, there were times when I was literally rolling on the floor, hysterically laughing almost to the point of crying. Let’s just say the most this book got out of me was a twitch of the lips. No matter how much I wanted the opposite, there was nothing other than that small amount of amusement.

If I’m going to be completely honest here, I’m just going to say that reading this book was like walking through a forest trying to enjoy the scenery during the night while it is foggy to point of zero visibility. I didn’t retain anything. Sure, my eyes saw the words, and I heard the sentences in my head, but did I actually pay attention? No. No, I most definitely did not. This was mostly due to the fact that I was being bored to tears. The whole middle section of the book was just like blah blah blah blah.

Rusty was stepped on and marched over during the whole book, and the author did a horrible job of trying to convince me that Jared was worth more than sweet Rusty. Anyone with a mass of gray matter between their ears can see that Jared is the hoity-toity prince of a rich family who goes off to the woods to sulk and generally be a jerk, and Rusty, amazing Rusty, is selfless (not all the time, but much more than Jared) and willing to be there for his friends (something Jared is frequently not). Kami, also, didn’t grow at all in Unmade. Instead, it’s like she regressed into a pathetic, little, helpless girl who was incapable of being the badass I was expecting. That was probably the biggest disappointment of all.

This series was just too strong in the beginning for me to accept this mediocre and sub-par novel as an adequate ending to an otherwise wonderful series. I closed the cover to this book, and all I could do was wonder what exactly happened to have caused the cataclysmic destruction of this phenomenal series. I would ask for Brennan to try again, but it’s already just too late. I’ve said my goodbyes to this series, and I won’t be sad if I never see this second-rate finale again. 

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