Author: Amy Tintera
Genre: High Fantasy
Source: Allen & Unwin
Goodreads
In the final book in the New York Times bestselling Ruined series, the romance of The Selection and the epic stakes of Red Queen come together in a story of revenge, adventure, and unexpected love.Review by Nara
Emelina Flores and her sister, Olivia, were determined to bring peace to the people of Ruina. But as the war for liberation raged on, what triumph and freedom meant to Em and Olivia slowly changed. As Olivia's violence and thirst for vengeance became her only ambition, Em was left to pick up the pieces.
But it's not only Em who is upset by Olivia's increased violence. Other members of the Ruined army are beginning to see the cracks, and soon a small group of them defects from Olivia's army and joins Em instead.
The two sisters are soon pitted against each other in an epic battle for the kingdom and the future, and only one will win.
Allied is the conclusion to the Ruined series, and I think that Amy Tintera does a pretty good job of tying everything together.
I had thought that Olivia would be a much more interesting character, but she seemed to devolve in this book to become a bit more one-dimensional and too focused on revenge. On the other hand, we see very nice development of Em's character, and she's a long way from the bloodthirsty girl we see in the very first scene of the series. There are quite a lot of point of view characters, which I think is different from previous novels (but my memory isn't great so I could be wrong). I had no issue with this, because I felt I knew the characters well enough to be diving between them.
I did feel that the ending was a bit anticlimactic. Em and Cas' problems seemed to be dealt with very easily, with there being few losses. I've come to expect even in YA for there to be some named character deaths in such a high stakes series ending battle, but instead it was a pretty easy match up where the protagonists basically walked through the battle unscathed.
Overall, Allied was a relatively satisfying conclusion to the Ruined series. I would recommend this series to fans of high fantasy novels with morally ambiguous characters.
Really liked it
RatingsOverall: 8/10
Plot: 4/5
Romance: 3.5/5
Writing: 4/5
World Building: 3/5
Characters: 3.5/5
Cover: 1/5
