Review: War Storm

War Storm by Victoria Aveyard
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Rise, red as the dawn.

I've finally finished Aveyard's fourth and final Red Queen tale, which I expected to be an epic, electric bloodbath.

Maybe it wasn't a bloodbath per se, but it was still quite epic and electric, once again validating my status as a passenger on the Aveyardian Hype Train.



Yeah, that Amazing Spider-Man 2-level electric. You read it here first, Pinecones.

Up till now, Iron Gold and the Talon Saga held the record for the most first-person POVs I saw in one book - four in each case, especially in the Talon sequels. Aveyard, for her 600-plus-page opus, here gives us no less than five - 5! - POV characters in first person, unexpected and unprecedented to the best of my knowledge. (And then, not to be outdone, my buddy Koda came along today and told me he had plans for as many as six POVs in his own novel. But that's neither here nor there.) I'm actually a little disappointed that Cameron doesn't get to reprise her POV status after King's Cage, and especially disappointed that one of the five POV characters is Maven, the one character still around up to this point whom I despise more than any other.

But you know what? Some of the other POV characters give him a run for his money in dislikability sometimes. I'm looking at Evangeline, especially, because of her unrelentingly snobby attitude towards the Reds. And then there's Iris and Mare, who, while both grounded in sympathy and family love and devotion to their causes, both have a tendency to rub me the wrong way here. I was actually happy, though, that we got one POV character I could totally, 100% get behind - Cal, of course. Hell, I almost want to call Cal the hero of this book, if only because the real protagonist, Mare, is much more of an anti-hero at this point. Not that she's evil, but her unwillingness to allow Cal to take the Nortan throne, her insistence on abolishing the monarchy entirely rather than trusting that a good man can rule well...it reminded me a lot of Jess in Buried Heart, especially.

The old arc words of the earlier books, "Anyone can betray anyone," rear their ugly heads but good in this final book. Like its predecessor, it's very heavy on the politicking, particularly as the Scarlet Guard tries to fully rally Montfort to its cause - and, of course, continue to pit all the Silver monarchs and lords against each other. Montfort represents an ideal, a constitutional democracy where everyone gets to have a say and truth, justice, and the American way aren't dead yet. But then, even Montfort has skeletons in its closet - they're not above kidnapping and holding royal children for ransom. So, more than ever, pretty much all the lands carved out of the North American continent of this future all represent different sides of America today - good and bad everywhere, it all depends on which you boost up and practice.

Like I said, this book isn't much of a bloodbath. As much as I enjoyed such infamously deadly finales as Deathly Hallows, Mockingjay, and Allegiant, here Aveyard gives us a far more hopeful ending, and yet a far sadder one too because it's quite open to interpretation what will happen going forward. I will say this much, though - the most prominent death was exactly what the doctor ordered, especially since without it, the open ending wouldn't have that perfect, arachnid-worthy balance of hope and tension.

As a last observation, I'm again very happy to see that Aveyard makes it a point of creating one of the most diverse and inclusive casts in YA. It's another sign of how much the second half of the series showcases her growth and maturity as a writer. Not only because we get to see so much more of her world and its inner workings, but because she takes such care to show that Red, Silver, or New (or Ardent, as the Montfortians call them), there's still a wide variety of skin colors and ethnicities and sexualities among all the people. Hell, it's really great to see how Montfort has an openly gay and happily married head of state, and we first know this while in Evangeline's POV no less, to show her starting to realize that she doesn't need to allow the homophobia dominant in Silver courts to force her into a life she can't abide. And with the extremely diverse cast all dressed in an extremely wide variety of colorful uniforms, it's hard not to look at this book, in particular, and think Aveyard wasn't influenced by Into the Badlands.

I have no idea what Aveyard plans to gift us with next, but of course I'm going to read it no matter what, because I'm still not getting off this hype train anytime soon.

For now, to the world of Red Queen, I say ave atque vale, and of course...

Rise, red as the dawn.

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