GLORIOUS POISON by Kat Dunn // book review

 

** Be warned that while I shall do my best to keep this as spoiler free as possible, potential spoilers for the previous two books may slip through the cracks, so proceed at your own risk! 

Plot:

The daring and dramatic conclusion to Kat Dunn's epic C18th French Revolution trilogy 'with lashings of lust, love, sacrifice, betrayal and horror'.

Robespierre is dead. The Reign of Terror is over.

As Royalist strength grows, the Duc de L'Aubespine plots a coup that will consign the revolution to history. With Olympe in his clutches, he believes nothing can stop him. But he's reckoned without the intrepid Battalion of the Dead!

Reunited in Paris, Ada is poised for action - but if she plays her hand too soon, everything she's sacrificed to gain his trust will be lost. Meanwhile, an unlikely alliance with an old enemy might be Camille's only option to save Olympe and stop the duc in his tracks.

The glittering and macabre bals des victimes and the eerie catacombs make the perfect backdrop for the final episode of the Battalion's tale.

Review:

It is no secret that I've been very fond of the Battalion of the Dead series since the very first novel, my review of which you can find here if you so desire. The series already started with such a bang - revolutionary France, breaking people out of the most heavily guarded prisons, scientific experiments, monstrous girls and Trauma™ as our group of heroes try to outrun or are forced to face all the loss and grief following them at every turn in each of their complicated ways. We then saw the story expand, add more key players to the board, and go places (both metaphorically and literally) that way may not have been able to foresee. Lo and behold, you can also see my review of this here!

This final novel is the culmination of all the wild adventures we've followed out endearing rascals on so far. It does what I like most in a series finale - it brings us all the way back to where we first started, yet everything else is undeniably changed. Mistakes have been made and so have painful choices meant to lead to the greater good while also risking the damnation of the characters on the way to this ideal conclusion. Regardless of the necessity of these choices or the understandable nature of their mistakes, the characters only gather even more ghosts to haunt them than they'd had before. Their closets become so full of skeletons by this last installment that they are about to overflow, leaving our Battalion unable to repress what they've fought so hard to keep at bay in order to be able to face another day. Either the shock of living against all odds, the difficulty of living with yourself in the wake of the choices you've had to make to protect yourself and those you love, or suddenly having to face your own mortality when you've tried to put that at bay for so long while simultaneously preparing for the innevitable, each and every one of our heroes has much to come to terms with in this novel. Dunn did a masterful job on taking each of these characters on their individual journeys while also keeping the group's dynamic and the found family aspect at the core of the novel. 

Emotionally, this final installment was as much of a rollercoaster as one might assume. I knew this to be a trustworthy and comforting (albeit objectively stressful) companion, so I decided to bring it along to keep me company in the airport and on a flight, so I managed to fully immerse myself in the absolute wild ride that was the last 10-15% of this novel, potentially looking like I'm about to go into acting with all the emotions quickly and dramatically changing on my face as I failed to put this down at any given stage. And then the waterworks started. I also have to note that some of those final scenes are so striking they have gathered a cinematic quality to me and are 100% bound to live rentfree in my mind for ages to come. 

As you might be able to tell, I don't have enough words to properly recommend this series to you highly enough, or to tell you how much I appreciated this as a conclusion.

My metaphorical hat off to Ms. Kat Dunn, I cannot wait to see what other stories she has in store for us. 

Don't forget to pick GLORIOUS POISON up, and also check out some of the other stops on the blog tour.