In which Elizabeth maybe breaks up with a series, or: Spy Glass by Maria V. Snyder

You have got to be kidding me.  Spoiler alert, this book is THE WORST IT SUCKS I HATE IT SO MUCH.  The first two books in The Glass trilogy are actually more or less on par with the first two books in the Study trilogy (They are a longer linked series, but are broken into trilogies which you can't skip or it makes no sense whatsoever which is how I discovered this trilogy exists at all).  The first book is fairly good, followed by the second book which is really good, so I was fully expecting the last book to round out the series with pretty good.

Instead this book happened.

Warning: crazy super spoilery rant to follow in:




3

....


2

....

1

.....



BUT REALLY YOU HAVE GOT TO BLOODY WELL BE KIDDING ME.

First of all, the number of kidnapped and rapes and attempted rapes is ludicrous. I'm not even sure I can count all of them:

There's Opal's original kidnapping rape torture in the first trilogy (possibly not rape? I still don't know), there's the bandits, there's the other bandits,  there's Devlin again, there's Walsh, there's Gar-whatsisname, and I'm fairly certain I'm missing a couple others.

And that's just the rapes. That's probably about half of the kidnappings. Which is RIDICULOUS.





But let's get the meat of the issue here:

Devlin.

YOU.
HAVE.
GOT.
TO.
BLOODY.
FUCKING.
WELL.
BE.
JOKING.

Oh you're such a cute couple, how did you meet? Well it's a funny story really, Devlin here kidnapped, tortured, and raped me for two days when I was only fourteen and he even helped kill my sister who was basically my whole world! And he was just so impressed at my ability to withstand torture that he just knew we had to give dating a chance! And after a few more kidnappings and rapes, I had to agree - he just really gets me, you know? So basically, just the usual torture rape love story!

There is just no redeeming how that went down, sorry. And the rest of the book was a mess anyway - it's like the plot of the book was just LET'S HAVE AS MANY RIDICULOUS CRAZY STORYLINES AS POSSIBLE! Let's have some government conspiracy over there, and random spy training everybody loves that, oooh and a crazy cult storyline would really top this story off!

And I really just LOVE that the reason thatuldn't be with Kade - you know, the sweet guy she had loads of chemistry with before inexplicably falling in love with her rapist she had previously spent the last two books being fully aware was gas lighting her - because she kept getting too involved with Sitian politics. Oh what's this we have happening literally not even a full chapter later? Oh lovely, Opal and Devlin are settling down with adopted children! What's that you say? They're staying out of politics?  THAT SOUNDS PRETTY FUCKING SETTLED DOWN AKA EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE OF THE REASONING BEHIND YOU AND KADE NOT BEING TOGETHER.

Just saying.