Review: Crimson Reign

Crimson Reign by Amélie Wen Zhao
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Three years ago, it seemed like, thanks to one of the most ludicrous cancellation campaigns in YA Twitter history, this book would never even be published, and neither would its two predecessors. Ironic, then, that Zhao has gotten the glorious chance to finish her debut trilogy, while I've noticed a few of those who spoke out against her and her first novel have had their own careers sidelined in recent years. No new publications, their own series on indefinite hold, that sort of thing. Perhaps karma does exist in the YA sphere after all, and the voices constantly trying to make enemies and cancel people will finally burn out as I've been hoping for for quite a while. 

But I digress. 

After Red Tigress ended on a pretty weapons-grade cliffhanger, I was super pumped to see where Zhao would take things in this final book of the trilogy. While the book does take its sweet time ultimately reaching its conclusion - being close to 500 pages doesn't help in that regard - it's all in the service of Zhao setting up all the chess pieces for Ana and Ramson to finally take down the sinister Empress Morganya. Them, and their many allies from abroad, plus a few secret weapons that make a lot of sense, but also make sense in that they haven't been used sooner, precisely because of how dangerous they are in practice.

It's not often that a YA series sticks the landing as delicately and excellently as this one does, but to Zhao's Blood Heir trilogy, I now bid ave atque vale.

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