Blog Tour: The Bitter Twins

The Bitter Twins
Rating: 4/5
Buy or Borrow: Buy
Source: Copy courtesy of the publisher! 

The Ninth Rain has fallen, the Jure'lia have returned, and with Ebora a shadow of its former self, the old enemy are closer to conquering Sarn than ever.

Tormalin the Oathless and the Fell-Witch Noon have their hands full dealing with the first war-beasts to be born in Ebora for nearly three hundred years. But these are not the great mythological warriors of old; hatched too early and with no link to their past lives, the war-beasts have no memory of the many battles they have fought and won, and no concept of how they can possibly do it again. The key to uniting them, according to the scholar Vintage, may lie in a part of Sarn no one really believes exists, but finding it will mean a dangerous journey at a time of war...

Meanwhile, Hestillion is trapped on board the corpse moon, forced into a strange and uneasy alliance with the Jure'lia queen. Something terrifying is growing up there, in the heart of the Behemoth, and the people of Sarn will have no defence against these new monsters. 

I've been waiting for this book eagerly, because the previous book, The Ninth Rain, had some mind blowing plot twists and blew me away and the end certainly left me wanting for more. One of my favourite things about this book is the lack of a lengthy recap going back over everything. We get glimpses of the war beasts via some different POV's, and then we're back with Tor and the crew and everything comes flooding back, with a brief reminder here and there. 

The POV's switch up as our group split up and head off on different missions. Tor and Noon head off on a search for something mentioned in the previous book, while Bern and Aldasair have a job of their own to do at Bern's home, and Vintage holds down the fort. Not to mention Hestellion's POV. I'm not going to lie, I really didn't like her in the first book and I still can't quite make my mind up about her in this book, I spend a lot of time side eyeing her and towards the end I was kind of mentally berating Tor for not killing her when he had the chance. I just can't decide if I like her. Having said that, it's interesting watching her character develop throughout this book, and I'm interested to see where she's going. 

On the subject of familiar faces, Tor has Kirune, his war beast, to bond with...and it's an interesting relationship in the start. Kirune basically ignored everything he said. Funnily enough I did get where Kirune was coming from and Vostok was irritating me too so I feel ya dude. I liked seeing Tor and Kirune bond and come together in this book, their bickering was pretty funny too. Tor finds out an interesting revelation that he has to deal with. I do want to smack Tor sometimes but he's one of my favourite characters. I feel like we start to bond with him and the other existing characters more in this book as we get to explore their characters more.

Noon....I don't know why, but at points in this book she really was beginning to bug me, she and Vostok both. I really liked her in the previous book, but this book...she was just annoying me a lot of the time, which I was kind of disappointed with. Although the final scene with her...I was cheering because finally! I'm so ready to see that scene! I have to mention Aldasair and Bern briefly because I freaking love them and I was so happy with developments for them in this book...well most. Something unpleasant happens to Bern that had me screaming, but he and Aldasair..HELL YES! I feel like we get to know both of them so much more this book and I loved seeing them come in to their own.

Vintage continues to freaking crack me up, she's got such a potty mouth and it has me in fits of giggles. I'd repeat some of her lines here but she has a lot of F-bombs. I really felt for her when certain things went down, it was something I didn't see coming, although I was shouting at her and Eri both because I knew full well what was going to happen and they where so blind to it! Eri is one of the new characters we meet in this book and I was kind of side eyeing him at the beginning, but I ended up really loving him, and he broke my heart in the end! The bickering war beasts where a highlight too, I'm not going to lie and it was interesting watching them grow closer with their respective warriors. 

The world building is truly brilliant, and the battle scenes are written so vividly. We take to the skies more for battles in this book because you know...war beasts! Which was an interesting change to the kind of battle scenes I usually see in books. There's so much freaking heartbreak and betrayal in this book, but also humour and action and just general epicness!  There's some more mad plot twists throughout this book, and we get hit with some huge reveals as what we thought we knew is turned upside down and expanded upon. 

And ya know...once again we're left wanting for more! This is such an original and intriguing series! 

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