Witch's Pyre

Here we go! The last book in Josephine Angelini's Worldwalker series, Witch's Pyre was another roller-coaster ride. Her books have this way of absorbing you into her world and with a little nudging, once I stopped overthinking, I realised there were parts of this book I didn't like, and parts I loved.

The book picks up after the big fight at the end of Firewalker. Lily's Tristan is dead. The group are outside a city on the west coast that none of them knew existed called Bower City. The first thing they notice is the Warrior Sisters are guarding the city and there are worker bees everywhere. A clue? Yes, this city works in so-called 'harmony' with the Hive but for all its opulence Lily and her group don't buy it. New characters are introduced called Toshi, Ivan and Grace, who is similar to Alaric, the sachem. Toshi shows the group the city and all it has to offer. Caleb disapproves, knowing these people could have helped the East with their live-longer creams and serums to protect the affluent. After a while they reunite with Rowan, who was also brought to Bower City. Lily refuses to be near him and their relationship has hit a dead end. While Rowan begins to mend fences with the other members, Lily is still too broken over the death of her Tristan to let him in.

The group start unraveling how Bower City works and start to get some idea of its sinister side. At another moment when one of the main group dies Lily takes everyone back to her real world, our world, to get away and regroup. Lily also learns to spirit walk them across the country to her own house. When they all decide to return for the final fight they take Lily's Juliet and Samantha with them. Lily starts communicating with Lillian again and learns that Lillian has her own nuke bomb she is going to use on the west coast to kill the queen of the hive.

From here on in it's Lily working with Lillian. Lily develops much in this book and becomes everyone's ambassador. She brings all the tribe and factions heads together and they start working as one. What they all want is for Lillian to NOT use that nuke.

What I didn't like about this book is probably what everyone else has been writing. While the world building is complete and we understand more of everyone's reasons for doing what they did, the writing came across as too linear. In that I mean it turned into the 'Lily Show.' After halfway in the book there was very little from Juliet, Una or Breakfast. They were just pawns to place here and there. When Lily starts to act and bring in the Woven everything turned mechanic with very little emotion or character rapport. I actually hated the whole chapters where Lily spent time with the insects. My skin almost crawled as I had to skim through pages.

The second thing I didn't like was the lack of Rowan. Only at the end did he come into his own. And the ending of the book was so cut off and unemotional I thought I must be missing some pages. The epilogue was alright but not what I expected. I mean, we've spent three books, countless hours going from one world to the other, so what the heck happened to everyone? Where did they all go? Did Uno and Breakfast stay in Lillian's Salem or go back to their own world. What happened with Caleb? Did Toshi and Mala survive and what happened to them?

At the end of the Worldwalker series I can honestly say I really enjoyed it. Although there were parts I didn't enjoy, and probably too many sidekicks that spoiled the balance, I liked the originality of the witches and how they progressed. However, I didn't have that feel-good factor at it's completion.