Darkest Mercy by Melissa Marr

I have my sneaky friend Alicia to thank for slipping me her ARC of Darkest Mercy--the final installment in Melissa Marr's Wicked Lovely series featuring the many wily courts of faerie. I've been looking forward to some desperately needed closure on this series for awhile now. I still remember running across Wicked Lovely what seems like so long ago and loving it. I fell even more in love with the darker Ink Exchange, which cemented my fascination with and unhealthy substantial interest in His Uber Dark Lordliness Irial. And the fabulous short story "Stopping Time" sort of pushed me over the edge as far as my admiration for Marr's storytelling skills and my love for some of these characters went. The other two installments in the series fell a bit flat for me for various reasons. And so I held my breath as I opened up the last one, hoping it would resolve things in both a satisfactory and suitably complex way. High expectations much? Who me?

Nobody is where they should be. Keenan is missing by his own choice. Aislinn is grasping at straws trying to keep the Summer Court afloat in his absence. Seth is floating between this world and that, courting disaster with his various alliances. Niall is losing is grip on the Dark Court with every ragged breath Irial draws. And Bananach is ranging free, inciting death and destruction wherever she goes. Too much discord, too much uncertainty haunts the courts of the fae as their regents struggle to retain power and protect their people. Donia and Aislinn have taken to meeting on a semi-regular basis to discuss their options, though summer and winter have never been pleasant bedfellows. Seth and Niall dance dangerously around their loyalties. And the Gabriel Hounds are out in force as Bananach's trail becomes more littered with bodies. Then a stranger shows up in Hunstdale, full of foreboding and guile. And he seems to know more about each of the main players than should be possible. But one thing is clear, he is just one more unknown quantity in the path toward conflagration they all seem to be walking.

I really had no clue as to how things were going to pan out. I had hopes. Of course I had hopes. For Irial/Niall/Leslie most of all. And Donia. I have always loved Donia. Though I'm pretty sure she deserves better than Keenan--she loves him. And I wanted her happy. And, as long as we're confessing, I may have been harboring a few leftover leanings with regards to Seth and Ash. Because they were great in Wicked Lovely, and what happened to them could not strictly have been avoided. Though there are always choices. And you can choose happiness. And those are my two favorite messages from this series. Ones I won't forget soon. But, overall, this last installment was a letdown in so many ways. Everything played out expediently and essentially along the lines of what I was expecting. But, somehow, it did so with an utter lack of the feeling and emotion that characterized the previous books in the series. There were scenes and particular moments which elicited a smile or a sigh from me, but they were just too few and far between to balance out the strange sense of rote apathy that pervaded the rest of the story. I ended it very puzzled by this, as the strongest emotion I felt at the close was gratitude that this character or that hadn't died. That was it. No joy or relish in the way it came about or in the sacrifices people made. I guess it just wasn't my book. And the ending doesn't taint my love for my favorites of the others. I'm not angry or even too sad. I closed it with a vague feeling of regret at its low impact, and I moved on. Mine is rather an unusual reaction, though, it should be stressed. By and large, I feel certain fans of the series will think this last book closes things out with a bang. See reviews below.

Darkest Mercy is due out March 1st.

Reading Order: Wicked Lovely, Ink Exchange (my review), "Old Habits,"  Fragile Eternity (my review), "Stopping Time" (my review), Radiant Shadows (my review), and Darkest Mercy


Linkage
The Book Swarm Review
Buried in Books Review
The Daily Harrell Review
Makeshift Bookmark Review
Novel Novice Review
The Sassy Librarian Review