Review: Lucero

Lucero by Maya Motayne
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It's been over two full years since Motayne published the second book of this trilogy, but I'm very glad that she got the chance to publish the whole series, because it's truly one of the most underrated in the YA sphere. While the first book and especially the second book dealt a lot with colonialism and its effects on linguistically attuned magic in universe, the diabolical cliffhanger ending of Oculta ensured that this book would have a wider focus on saving the world - and especially the diabolical first chapter of near instantaneous mass murder on Sombra's part. In order to defeat Sombra, Finn and Alfie and even Luka and James have to figure out a way to travel to all the other countries in Mundo - the Scandinavian inspired Uppskala, Nigerian inspired Ygosi, and Chinese inspired Weilai (named Mirai in earlier books, but I see Motayne decided to change that since the original name was more Japanese) - to recover all the missing parts of Sombra. Because the biggest challenge is that in order to defeat Sombra, Sombra's gotta be made whole. Not gonna be easy, is it? But our heroes are as up to the challenge as you might expect, and while I can imagine the epilogue pisses a few fans off (Motayne said she wrote it very early in her process for this whole trilogy), I'd say it's as excellent an adiós as this series deserves.

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