Now that Relos Var’s plans have been revealed and demons are free to rampage across the empire, the fulfillment of the ancient prophecies—and the end of the world—is closer than ever.
To buy time for humanity, Kihrin needs to convince the king of the Manol vané to perform an ancient ritual which will strip the entire race of their immortality, but it’s a ritual which certain vané will do anything to prevent. Including assassinating the messengers.
Worse, Kihrin must come to terms with the horrifying possibility that his connection to the king of demons, Vol Karoth, is growing steadily in strength.
How can he hope to save anyone when he might turn out to be the greatest threat of them all?
Title : The Memory of Souls
Author : Jenn Lyons
Series : A Chorus of Dragons (book three)
Format : eBook (overdrive)
Page Count : 636
Genre : fantasy
Publisher : Tor Books
Release Date : August 25, 2020
Reviewer : Hollis
Rating : ★ ★ ★
Hollis’ 3 star review
Alright, we have yet another book unfolding as bits of story being pieced together so lets just get that commentary out of the way. I guess I have to just resign myself to that being how this series is going to unfold. There, acknowledged and resigned. Moving on!
So obviously, another thing to get out of the way? I clearly liked this one better. And I did. Book two took a hard dip down into no-fun-land but book three has definitely given me hope for how the rest will go.
As far as the everyone-is-reincarnated-and-related-to-everyone-and-going-by-multiple-names-as-they-all-remember-their-past-selves bit? Wellll that’s less fun. And highly confusing. And honestly just seems like drama for drama’s sake. But some of that is at least acknowledged; the confusion, I mean, not the drama, and how one is supposed to behave with all these memories and feelings bombarding them half the time. But that only ever seems to come up when there’s reason to prop up some romantic conflict and angst so.. might be more plot device than real at this stage.
But as for said romance! I don’t think I mentioned in my review for book two that I could kind of see where Lyons was going with the main ship; and I likely didn’t bother bringing this up because I didn’t really like either of the love interests. So I wasn’t all that invested. Well I’m still kind of in that stage. Except I did like Janel a little more in this book and I liked that she was so anti-Teraeth (and rightly so, he was being an idiot) until she wasn’t. And I liked that Kihrin was a bit nasty to Teraeth, until he wasn’t. But with how book three ended.. we are definitely unlikely to get any satisfaction out of this dynamic for a while. Which might not be a bad thing. There was so much to keep track of with the other Eight, the gods, the various reincarnations, that one (or two..?) less relationships to keep tabs on will be a nice break.
Especially because amongst all that you have to sort out who is betraying who and why and who is lying and who isn’t and omg insert that gif of the guy in front of the murder board losing his mind.
But really what saved this was the plot. The characters, the main ones we’re along the ride for at least, did feel more like themselves which helped. And once again we have a pretty great ending. I didn’t expect to be back in this world so soon but my library dropped this in my lap early and ran away cackling. Only to then drop book four alongside it, too (with the fifth, and final, only days away). So I guess this is now officially a binge.
A Take from Two Cities 