Book review: The Poison Song by Jen Williams

May 20, 2019

Book review: The Poison Song by Jen Williams

Title: The Poison Song (Winnowing Flame Trilogy #3)
Author: Jen Williams
Publisher: Headline
Release date: 16 May 2019

Synopsis: All is chaos. All is confusion. The Jure'lia are weak, but the war is far from over.

Ebora was once a glorious city, defended by legendary warriors and celebrated in song. Now refugees from every corner of Sarn seek shelter within its crumbling walls, and the enemy that has poisoned their land won't lie dormant for long.

The deep-rooted connection that Tormalin, Noon and the scholar Vintage share with their Eboran war-beasts has kept them alive so far. But with Tor distracted, and his sister Hestillion hell-bent on bringing ruthless order to the next Jure'lia attack, the people of Sarn need all the help they can get.

Noon is no stranger to playing with fire and knows just where to recruit a new - and powerful - army. But even she underestimates the epic quest that is to come. It is a journey wrought with pain and sacrifice - a reckoning that will change the face of Sarn forever.

Review:
I remember the emotional trauma of reading The Bitter Twins last year, and since finishing it have eagerly been awaiting the end of this fantastic trilogy (though I can’t quite believe it’s the end!) Since it had been a year I was worried that I wouldn’t remember the events of the last book, but with every page the memories kept flooding back and all the feelings I’d built up towards the characters came flooding back. The action kicks off right where we left it and you immediately feel galvanized with Noon and Vostok, basking in their revenge, and we keep building and building to the final climatic battle.

Throughout the trilogy we’ve explored Sarn, had the world unfold in from of us in all its glory and then get covered in varnish by the Jure’lia. We’ve as the majesty and mythology of the war beasts but this last instalment was very much driven by and centred on the characters. The development of their relationships, the experiences that they shared and the lengths they were willing to go when their relationships are pushed to the limit, having already been through so much throughout the series. Everyone’s story gets a new layer added, we have Noon trying to tackle her past, Tor and his multiple internal battles and the pressure that Vintage puts on herself. I love everything about Vintage, I seriously think we need a chronicles of vintage series . I’ve also been shipping Bern and Aldasair since the last book and I needed their relationship to stay strong, theirs was a beautiful touch that brought light to dark moments. With each character chapter ending you were always left wanting more, to continue in that part of the journey and this created a really good pace for the book. There were high and low moments where we got the battles but then also got to flesh out the characters and everyone here was affected in some way that changed their narrative. Hestillion was always a character I’d not been sold on (I think it’s always important to have characters like that, who you can grapple with) and even with her arrogance I think she was the one that changed the most for me, that ending had me gripped. Also a special shout-out to Helcate. Every series needs a Helcate, a character who gives you so much just from one word.

As much as our characters have grown over the series, one set that hasn’t is the Jure’lia, the hive mind of one that presented one of the most interesting aspects of this book. They have existed in their arrogance to come, conquer and move on, never questioning, never doubting just doing. Yet this ideology starts to break down here, there has been a disruption and the Jure’lia queen tries to begin to understand this. This almost makes the queen a likeable character (if that was possible). This need to want to understand the connections and the power that these connections hold between humans, not only validates my earlier point of how this book was all about the power of these relationships but it created a beautiful dramatic showdown with Bern, and just made me love him even more.

Our heroes were fighters right until the bigger end and it was an intense joy to read the final battle. Good against evil in one final showdown and was here, on the edge of my seat for every minute of it. It was a great, if not emotional ending to the series and I felt this calm once I'd out the book down, only to want to pick up the ninth rain and start it all over again.