On Starships and Dragonwings

Taste of Darkness by Maria V. Snyder is the conclusion to the Healer trilogy. It concludes the story of Avry and Kerrick and their fight to bring peace to their continent after the devastating plague destroyed the fabric of society. Taste of Darkness, and the Healer series in general, struggled a bit with trying to tell too long and epic of a story in three moderately-sized books. I ended up frequently feeling rushed, but also excited about everything that was happening. That being said, I found Taste of Darkness to be a very satisfying end to this fun and creative fantasy trilogy.

Note: I received Taste of Darkness through Netgalley for an honest review. Some things may have changed in the final version.

Taste of Darkness by Maria V. Snyder (Healer #3)
Published by Harlequin MIRA on Dec 31st, 2013
Genres: Fantasy, YA 
Length: 400 pages
How I got my copy: NetGalley
IndieBound - Book Depository - Goodreads
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She's fought death and won. But how can she fight her fears?

Avry knows hardship and trouble. She fought the plague and survived. She took on King Tohon and defeated him. But now her heart-mate, Kerrick, is missing, and Avry fears he's gone forever.

But there's a more immediate threat. The Skeleton King plots to claim the Fifteen Realms for his own. With armies in disarray and the dead not staying down, Avry's healing powers are needed now more than ever.Torn between love and loyalty, Avry must choose her path carefully. For the future of her world depends on her decision. 

Strengths:

• Taste of Darkness continues the POV switching between Avry and Kerrick, which worked really well. It gave Taste of Darkness a chance to tell a complete story about the things going on in the world, since again Kerrick and Avry spend a significant time apart. It’s also fun to see what they think of each other *swoon*.
• Gah! The bad guys get creepier if that’s possible! There is a new villain (pseudo-king) on the scene and he makes Tohon look like a sadistic kitten…. Tohon is still making trouble of course though, leading to all the shenanigans!
• I enjoyed the intricate plot twists and turns that Taste of Darkness contained. You definitely need to be paying attention, let me tell you!
• Taste of Darkness had quite a satisfying ending. I wasn’t in love with all the choices made, but I think people will be happy with how things turn out :).
• We get to find out more about the plague and it was awesome! Avry is so clever and used fairly accurate (if you consider magic is involved) medical know-how, woot!

Weaknesses:

•  OMG why won’t people just stay dead???? You know how someone dies in the first book but then… yeah that continues A LOT. I won’t tell you who or when of course, but after the third time someone tragically dies, but then really isn’t dead in this series, I get annoyed.
• Some of the gang of secondary characters conveniently changed personalities and discovered a savant ability when it was obviously really convenient. Ugh.
• Maybe I was just too tired while reading Taste of Darkness at times, but wow did I get confused at times. Especially in my eARC, there weren’t chapter divisions between Avry and Kerrick’s switches, making it all the more tricky to figure out who is narrating and what is going on.
• Due to the sheer number of events that are stuffed in to Taste of Darkness, I felt that I got disconnected from Avry. Where is that spunky character that I wanted to be BFFs with in the first book? She’s off doing something and being tough, which is all well and good, but she lost a bit of her human element.

Summary:

Taste of Darkness is definitely a finale that most people will enjoy. If you’ve read this far in the trilogy, you might as well finish right! Plus, there are so many cool things we finally find out about in Taste of Darkness, so I really do recommend it if you’ve enjoyed the first two books. This trilogy in general made me constantly wish it had been stretched into about five books so that we could spend more time with the characters and not rush through events as much, but it is what it is. If that hasn’t bothered you yet, no reason for it to bother you now ;-).