ARC Review: This Cursed Light by Emily Thiede

Series: The Last Finestra #2

When the gods make the rules, the players must choose: Sacrifice their love to save the world, or choose love and let it burn?

Six months after saving their island from destruction and almost losing Dante, Alessa is ready to live happily ever after with her former bodyguard. But Dante can’t rest, haunted by a conviction that the gods aren’t finished with them yet. And without his powers, the next kiss from Alessa could kill him.

Desperate for answers, Dante enlists Alessa and their friends to find the exiled ghiotte in hopes of restoring his powers and combining forces with them to create the only army powerful enough to save them all. But Alessa is hiding a deadly consequence of their last fight–a growing darkness that’s consuming her mind–and their destination holds more dangers than anyone bargained for. In the mysterious city of the banished, Dante will uncover secrets, lies, and ghosts from his past that force him to ask himself: Which side is he on?

When the gods reveal their final test, Dante and Alessa will be the world’s last defense. But if they are the keys to saving the world, will their love be the price of victory?

In This Cursed Light, Dante and Alessa face their most daunting challenge yet when the Gods demand they prove their worth by choosing the ultimate sacrifice to save humanity, once and for all.

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Overall Recommendation:

The beauty of its predecessor unfortunately does not translate into this final piece of the duology. This Cursed Light lacked the fiery angst between its protagonists and the urgent pull of an impending disaster the way the first book did. I loved seeing more of the same secondary characters I enjoyed from book 1, but I wasn’t very wowed by the ending or much of the climax leading up to it.

**This Cursed Light comes out December 5, 2023**

Thank you to Emily Thiede for providing this ARC and your beautiful annotations. I did really enjoy the additional insight into your writing.

I will firstly say that I wanted to love this conclusion to the series that started with This Vicious Grace. I really enjoyed that story even though I wasn’t sure how much more would be turned into a sequel.

But with the gods not fully done with Dante or Alessa, another apocalyptic battle was on the rise. However, I felt there were certain holes in the plot I wished could’ve been either fleshed out more or attempted to be filled at all.

For example, Dante has been receiving nightmarish visions (of the future?) that he believes is from the good goddess Dea to warn of what’s to come as his mission to stop it. Not a lot of explanation for how he dealt with it, the way it appeared and disappeared at will, and no further clarity from these visions minus a piazza full of blood. Was it supposed to help him figure the end of the world more? Or just a warning there was more after Divorando when they defeated the supernatural last time? If just a warning, why couldn’t it have only been once? The message doesn’t change, so yeah, I’m sure Dante gets it that something bad is coming.

What drew me in for book 1 was the underlying urgency of a battle they had to be prepared for to save the world that didn’t believe in them, and a forbidden/angsty love forming between supposed enemies. This book had…watered down versions of both elements. Alessa and Dante are (somewhat) allowed to be together now so a lot of the angst and banter changed. It became a game of insecurities which could get annoying when you’re in both characters’ POVs and know exactly how they feel about each other. I understand driving a wedge of sorts between the characters for romantic angst in book 2 after they got together previously, but it perhaps was not the right way to go for angst that drew my attention.

The preparation for war was also way too tedious. It felt like too many pages were given for training purposes and not much else world building or significant character building was happening. We’re introduced to more ghiottes, Dante’s people, but I barely formed too much attachment to any one of them. The secondary characters I liked from book 1, such as all the Fonti that worked with Alessa, were still relegated to comic relief or plot devices. There may have been a countdown but I didn’t feel the urgency of impending doom when the suspense never took off too much. Perhaps I read too many high fantasies with *events* happening all the time, but I would’ve liked more than just training for the final stand to occur for the majority of the book.

I will not say I’m disappointed – I did have the upper hand of seeing more insights into the creation of this book than most – but perhaps the correct way to describe my feelings is a yearning for more. I know the potential for This Cursed Light and I wish some of what I had hoped for came into fruition.