Book #64 of 2023: The Once King
Aug. 13th, 2023 08:59 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thistlechaser
The Once King (FFO Book 3) by Rachel Aaron and Travis Bach.
This is the final book of the Forever Fantasy Online trilogy. I loved the first book, rabidly hated the second book. My opinion on this book matches a Goodreads review. The whole review:
I finished the trilogy... so there's that?...
I had intended to mostly skim this book, but I ended up mostly reading it. The main character, Tina, who in the previous two books believed that genocide and killing hundreds or thousands of innocent people was a perfectly fine solution to any of her problems, did a 180 in this book. All three books took place in less than two weeks, and somehow between book 2 and 3 (a day or two of story time), Tina went from pro-genocide to caring about everyone.
She also went from hating her brother (James) with the fury of a thousand suns, wanting to beat him up every time she saw him, to:
...and then James--blessed, wonderful James--had...
It didn't make her a perfect person, but it made me stop growling every time I read the book (even though the change in her was so fast it was completely unbelievable).
Through the three books, there was a romance, but it was really, really bad. Love at first sight, the man (SilentBlayde) dedicating his entire life to Tina, to love and protect and do whatever he had to do to help her, from first sight. They got married in the third book (spoiler, but I strongly recommend you do not read this series beyond the first book), which somehow made their relationship even worse.
The second book had been horribly edited. This book was okay. Not perfect, but good for a self-published book.
Like books 1 and 2, more than 10% of this book was advertising for the author's other books.
The only part of the book I really enjoyed was the epilogue. It was only a couple pages long, but it had a paragraph or two for each of the characters, letting the reader know what happened to them for the rest of their life. That was really nice and sweet.
This was such a fun idea for a trilogy. I wish I could have enjoyed the second and third book as much as the first one.
