Series: Defiance #3
Everything hangs in the balance, and nothing is certain: Rachel has been kidnapped by enemy forces and is being taken to Rowansmark while Logan, imprisoned and awaiting trial, is unable to leave Lankenshire. Separated from each other and their Baalboden comrades, each must find a way to achieve what they desperately want: to rid their world once and for all of the Commander and the tech that controls the deadly Cursed One.
Fighting through her pain and embracing the warrior she’s become, Rachel will do whatever it takes to escape her enemies’ clutches and join Logan in his fight. But when she learns a secret that changes everything, she realizes that escaping Ian and his tracker friends is no longer an option if she wants to save the people she loves. Instead, she’ll have to destroy Rowansmark from the inside out—if she can survive the journey through the Wasteland.
Logan needs allies if he wants to thwart Rowansmark’s power grab and rescue Rachel. But securing allies will mean betraying his beliefs and enlisting the help of the man he hates more than anyone: Commander Jason Chase. Driven by his fierce love for Rachel and his determination to make their world safe, Logan may be just the weapon the city-states need to defeat the Cursed One.
But as Rowansmark bears down and uneasy alliances are tested, will Rachel and Logan’s love for each other be enough to surmount the unbelievable odds against them?
2.5 Drink Me Potions
I don’t know why I thought the conclusion to the series would be any more exciting or action-packed. It most definitely never reached the amount of excitement I was expecting for a finale. Let me put my disappointment into perspective for you.
Logan and Rachel were separated at the end of the previous book, Deception. Logan’s POV is his constant pining away for her alternating with all his Worst Case Scenarios where his enemy the Commander is concerned. Rachel’s isn’t a whole lot better as she’s just basically a punching bag for those who’ve taken her. Especially the traitor that was alluded to in the previous novel. So she’s taking in all this physical and verbal abuse. Some crazy stuff about pain atonement and sacrifice necessary in order to right one’s honour. A bunch of BS if you ever asked me.
So that’s where the novel starts. These two scenarios. And basically these two scenarios continue along those same lines for like… the whole freaking book . It doesn’t matter where they each are, location wise. Inner monologue is the same. Logan’s trying to use the Commander and outsmart him once he knows his enemy’s gonna try to get rid of him. Rachel’s trying to outsmart her captors and even destroy anything that may cause Logan to lose his war against the city-state of Rowansmark.
All of Deliverance is also basically just travelling around the Wastelands. Logan and friends, plus the Commander tagging along, are moving around trying to build alliances to ensure a larger army against Rowansmark. Rachel and her captors are steadily moving towards Rowansmark. Once they’ve each done that, it’s practically the end of the book and that’s when “war” breaks loose.
And I do mean “war”. With the quotations.
For the epic climax of the series, this “war” wasn’t all that epic. The way their enemies were dealt with wasn’t all that satisfying either. Maybe I just have high expectations when it comes to how one’s mortal enemies are taken care of at the end of a long, strung-out battle of the wills (and physicality) that stretched over the span of a few books.
I suppose why I didn’t just DNF the series was simply due to the fact that it was an ebook that I read and I was feeling too lazy to flip through a hard copy novel at the time. Personality-wise, Rachel’s grown to understand healing requires opening oneself to vulnerability and feelings. She accepted that maintaining her humanity was worth the cost of the explosion of emotions that could assault her.
Plus, she had firsthand experience seeing what being consumed by revenge could do to someone when they blocked out everything but the darkness and silence inside of them. Too bad she came to this conclusion SO late into the series, considering this plot element started at the end of book 1.
All in all, Deliverance wasn’t the lowest of the low, but it sure didn’t have a whole lot going for it. Would I recommend this series as a whole? Or even just this one book?
The short answer? I dunno. It may just not work for me, but it seems it’s doing something semi-right with other readers. Either way, the journey Logan and Rachel took, both physically and emotionally, was one heck of a rollercoaster ride. I don’t regret going down this path with them, but I do wish that Redwine could make it more exciting and less angsty next time.
Overall Recommendation:
Deliverance doesn’t pack the proper punch for a series finale. With the usual slowness in plot development and hardly anything that was surprising to curb up the rating, it basically tied up all the loose ends in a predictable manner that ended mostly well for everyone. Logan and Rachel grew a lot, but I can’t say that it made up for the fact that they both just did a whole lot of travelling in this story (just like the last one – what does Redwine love about people walking ALL THE TIME in her stories?) with the same worried inner monologues wherever they went. I think a whole lot of things could’ve been tweaked for the better, but to be fair, it wasn’t so bad that I couldn’t finish it. Not sure that’s much better of a recommendation, but it is what it is.
Down the Rabbit Hole 