Review and Guest Post: The Descent by Alma Katsu

Title: The Descent
Author: Alma Katsu
Format: Paperback
Publisher: Gallery Books
Publish Date: January 7, 2014
Source: I received a copy from the publisher; however, this did not affect my review.

Why You're Reading This Book:

• You've read the first two books in this trilogy.
• You like fantasy.

What's the Story?:

From Goodreads.com: "Lanore McIlvrae has been on the run from Adair for hundreds of years, dismayed by his mysterious powers and afraid of his temper. She betrayed Adair’s trust and imprisoned him behind a stone wall to save Jonathan, the love of her life. When Adair was freed 200 years later, she was sure that he would find her and make her existence a living hell. But things turned out far different than she’d imagined.

Four years later, Lanore has tracked Adair to his mystical island home, where he has been living in self-imposed exile, to ask for a favor. She wants Adair to send her to the hereafter so she may beg the Queen of the Underworld to release Jonathan, whom she has been keeping as her consort. Will Lanore honor her promise to Adair to return? Or is her intention to reunite with Jonathan at any cost?

Of all the forces of the universe, the most mysterious, confounding, and humbling is the power of love. The epic story of love and loss, magic and destiny that began with The Taker and sparked a chase around the world in The Reckoning comes to a surprising conclusion with The Descent."
  
My Two Cents:

"The Descent" is the final book in Alma Katsu's the Taker trilogy. You definitely should read the first two books in the trilogy before getting to this book so that you can understand all of the in's and out's of the relationships between the various characters. I thought this was a really good and very surprising ending to this trilogy. I totally did not guess the ending and I absolutely love being surprised.

I did have to refresh my memory about what had happened in the previous books so I do recommend reading the first two books a little close to when you read this book. Whereas the previous two books had way more of a historical element to them, this book definitely fell more to the paranormal side of things. I wish that there was a little bit more of a historical element but in this book, it definitely works since you already got the historical background in the previous books.

By this point in time, the characters felt like old friends to me in this book. We know how Lanny and Adair work. We know their personalities and we get to see a little bit more in this book. The characters, especially Adair, seem to mature a lot in this book. Adair realizes that he needs to do something much different than what he was doing in order We get to find out a lot more about the underworld, which was super interesting to me.

Overall, I thought that this was a good ending to a good trilogy! 

Guest Post:

I am very excited to welcome Alma Katsu here to A Bookish Affair today!

All Hail the Readers!

If you’re reading this blog, chances are you’re a heavy-duty reader.

You’re the kind of person who would rather read a book than watch television. Which means you might be behind a couple episodes on your absolutely favorite TV series, but that’s okay. You’ll just avoid Twitter the night the episode airs so you won’t trip over any spoilers. Or maybe you skipped checking out Sleepy Hollow even though everyone in your office is talking about it because, hey, it’s one less night you’re chained to the television set and one more night to turn the pages.

And let’s not even talk about movies. They’re expensive—money that could be spent picking up another book—and besides, they’re so formulaic these days. You know how the whole story is going to unfold by the time you’re fifteen minutes past the credits.

You would love to have someone to talk to about your latest favorite book but have you noticed, it’s really hard to find anyone who reads novels these days. Especially the kind of books you like to read, which aren’t necessarily what everyone else is reading. Have you noticed how hard it is to find people who also like to ferret out books off the beaten path? Who read books that aren’t on the bestsellers list? God, you’d really like to have someone to talk to about that last novel you read . . . you’d almost consider paying someone to read it just so you could have a really juicy talk about why the heroine ended up doing the thing she did . . .

If you’re reading this blog, chances are you’re one of the rare adults who reads novels. You know how rare you are, because when you ask people what was the last book they’ve read, all you get are blank-eyed stares. So let’s take a minute and be grateful for our fellow booknerds, because there just aren’t enough of us: people who like to feed our imaginations rather than have dreams and nightmares fed to us. People who find their best friends in the pages of a book. People who want to live in a land that only exists on paper, scratched in ink. People who’ve learn the best lessons in life from folks who have never been alive.

And like all booknerds, we are our happiest when we’ve convinced someone to pick up a book we absolutely loved. So here’s your chance: tell us what’s the one book you think everyone on the planet should read?

About the Author:

Alma Katsu is the author of The Taker Trilogy, an epic supernatural love story that—while compared to early Anne Rice and Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander for its mix of history, fantasy and romance—is most often described as being “like nothing else you’ve ever read”. The final book in the series, The Descent, has just been released by Gallery Books.