4.29 on CAWPILE. It's not a one star, because I did like a few things. But I wish it would have stayed a trilogy. The ending of Library of Souls was great and satisfying, and while A Map of Days promised a great second trilogy, perhaps it just became too much. Throughout this book I found myself wishing it would end quicker. I give it two stars mainly for nostalgia because the the first trilogy was so good with setting up world building. I was very disappointed.

Couldn't have ended this book series better in any other way.

I have to say, this one manages to feel even more final than even Library of Souls did. It's got the sprawling length of A Map of Days and the unrelentingly fast pace of The Conference of the Birds - not only because we begin with the last book's cliffhanger finally getting resolved, but also because this one opens with a powerful punch, smack in the middle of a hurricane. And we thought the tornado in the last book was wild enough... But yes, with Caul and Murnau waging all the war on all of Peculiardom, it's only natural that Riggs goes all out in the finale, with tons of apocalypses on the daily and too many unexpected twists to count, including a few little tricks that I honestly never saw coming, and found truly horrifying and indicative of how much this series has grown in the decade since Riggs first started publishing it. To think we got the original trilogy, then the movie, then a new trilogy that set about undoing its predecessors' status quo with such a bloody vengeance... I honestly can't wait to see what Riggs gives us next, even if it's outside of Peculiardom. But to this series, I now bid another ave atque vale, likely for the last time. At least it doesn't have such a prolonged soul-crush of an epilogue like Library of Souls this time, that's for damn sure. Here are my thoughts about the ending: The way Caul died was a little too on the 'not human' side. I wanted Caul to feel what it was like to die a human. I mean, if he wanted to live a monster, he might as well die a human. I wanted him to bleed to his end, not turn into shredded paper. I also wanted him to die in the shadows of Abaton, and in the place where he died, a tree grows. I already knew this wouldn't happen, since my expectations are always quite specific. The way Caul canon-ly met his end was quite saddening and concentrated more on the heroes. I wanted to know how he died, how he felt when he did. I also wanted Miss P to feel something. He was her brother, after all, her own flesh and blood. The way she flapped her wings for him to crumble to dust kind of hurt my feelings, to be honest. I also wanted Caul to say something meaningful before he died, something about being remembered, since that was one of his goals. I really liked the idea of Myron being attached to him, but I wanted him to die as a separate person. In my opinion, he's been through a lot and deserves to be remembered as someone more than the creator of the Panloopticon and Miss P/ Caul's brother. In short, the ending was amazing, but not quite what I expected.

At last this journey comes to a close. The enemy vanquished, the heroes returned home. Everything has come full circle. What a perfect ending.

4.25

This was an amazing finale to this series, in my opinion. There wasn't a dull moment in this book. It was full of action and learning about the world and situation. Going into this book I was bit scared because there were still so many questions I had left but Ransom Riggs managed to answer them all in this book without any of it feeling rushed. I love this world and these characters so much and I dont think that this ending almost made my heart burst out of my chest. It's just such a satisfying end to this story. I was on the edge of my seat the entire time I was reading this book. Even though there's a lot of action and worldbuilding there a lot of small character moments that made this book feel so full and realistic. It's so hard for me to talk about this book without spoilers because I just want to gush about everything that happened and how much I loved it. I can't believe this series is over now.

I think this was the perfect ending to the series

This truly was the perfect ending to this series. I don’t want to include spoilers so I won’t divulge any more. Again beautiful writing, story building and character development from Riggs. I wish I could read these books for the first time again.

I wasn't ready for this series to end! 😭 I loved this one just as much as the others and am going to miss reading about all the characters 😢

This series started so strong with book 1. The first trilogy was solid. Book 4 was really good and looked to go in interesting directions...then 5 and 6 were just going right back over ground from books 1-3, but the bad guys were super powered and the good guys still beat them being the same people basically. Just kind of disappointed in this.