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Title: Legends Rise (#3 Venators)
Author: Devri Walls
Published: 12th of May 2020 – Brown Books Publishing Group
Format: Ebook – 575 pages
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Hello Hello! How are you?
Today I’m bringing you a really late review for a blog tour I was participating in during October! I was so busy that I didn’t have time to finish it for my spot, but I’m so glad that I finally finished this amazing book. Once again, Dave from @The_WriteReads has offered an amazing book to his bloggers and I’m going to do my best to convince you to pick it up without screaming!
Thank you so much to Dave and Devri for letting me take part in this tour, and thank you for providing me with a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own. I’m so sorry it’s up after the tour, I just didn’t have time to read at all for a few weeks!
If you haven’t read this series yet but you want to, don’t keep reading this review because there are bound to be spoilers! Please head over to my review of Magic Unleashed (book 1) and/or Promises Forged (book 2), and I hope you will want to pick up this series, I really love it and hope you will too.
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GOODREADS SYNOPSIS
In the third instalment of the Venators series, Rune, Grey, and their companions Beltran and Verida have set off together to save their mentor Tate from the gladiator games. As their group struggles to stay together under the strain of their situation, Rune’s twin brother Ryker is falling more surely into the clutches of Zio the sorceress, who has her own plots for the future of Eon, and the Venators.
The path will be forged in sweat and blood.
Rune, Grey, the shape-shifter Beltran, and willful vampire, Verida, set out to rescue their friend and mentor, Tate, from the gladiator games. But first they must navigate the perils of Eon and its warring factions. Each of this band of four carries with them a secret that threatens to tear their group apart from within. Rune now bears the mark of the promise she made to save Grey’s life-a nixie bubble lodged in her arm that could call her away to do their bidding or spell her death.
Even as their loyalty to their cause and to one another faces its greatest test, Rune’s twin brother Ryker is forging an alliance with their mortal enemy, the powerful sorceress Zio, who has plans of her own for the Venators and Eon. Hearts will be bared, secrets unveiled, and relationships made and destroyed in this stunning new instalment of the Venators series.
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MY REVIEW
Legends Rise by Devri Walls is the third book in her Venators series, a young adult fantasy series filled with amazing characters, superb world-building, history, political intrigue and such a great plot that twists and turns and surprises you around every corner. When Dave announced the tour for the third book in this series, I just couldn’t say no. I had read the first 2 books earlier in the year and absolutely fell in love with Devri’s story, her writing style, her world, her imagination and these books are so binge-worthy, comforting, shocking (in a good way) and very, very unique. I’m going to do my best with this review and not blather on for ages, but because it is the third book in the series, I’m not going to go into too much detail to avoid the maximum amount of spoiling.
Legends Rise starts off where Promises Forged finished. This is something that I love about these books because it literally feels like a new episode of a TV series that I can dive right back into and not have to wonder about what happened between the end of the last one and the start of the new one. Beltran, Verida, Rune and Grey are off on another mission, involving Tate, and in this book, Zio and Ryker worm their way deeper into the intrigue.
Another thing I adore about this series is that it has so many avenues that it could go down, and I can see this being a really big series because through each plot twist and new event, there are 10 things that could happen! I love the fact that it’s so rich, has so many possibilities, and just keeps giving! I don’t think you could get bored reading this book, whenever I had a spare minute to read, I whizzed through a new chapter and I’m quite sad I couldn’t just binge it in one go.
The world-building, as I have said innumerable times before concerning this series, is so impressive! There is just so much to this series, I can’t emphasize that enough! The political undertones to this book are really subtle, but they are constantly in the background and they give the world and the characters’ depth, they all have motivations and things they need to do and despite the fact that they are all supernatural creatures, it makes they real and believable. I can picture this world so vividly, and I just can’t get enough of it, Venators has become a favourite series and I am going to treat myself to some physical copies and rediscover the stories time and time again.
I can’t and won’t say much about the characters because they all go through such massive developments in each book, that I just can’t bear to spoil anyone. I love seeing them constantly grow and evolve, their relationships strengthen, see them push and pull and mould around one another to become a team and now even a family. I still love Beltran SO MUCH!!! He has quickly become one of my favourite characters and where we had more of a focus on the council, Tashara, Beltran and Rune, and finally Grey in Promises Forged (#2), the story has come back around to include Verida and Tate, with Rune, Grey and Tate and now blending in seamlessly side plots with wolves, Zio and Ryker.
Devri’s writing style is enchanting and it has me hooked as soon as I dive into one of her books, it’s really hard to describe it, but it’s beautiful and simple, but also intricate and descriptive, it gives depth and palpability to the story and it makes me feel like I am in this world with these characters. I honestly think that this could make an amazing TV show!
We learn a lot about some of the characters in this book, I suppose their development and the world-building that wraps around them and changed subtly in each book is kind of what you could call slow-burn, but not in a romantic way, even though there are romantic threads to this story. It’s really complicated to explain, and even though this book does go slowly at times, and then really speeds up, there is a slight tension in the fact that small things are revealed to the reader little by little and keep us reading as fast as we can.
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MY THOUGHTS AND RATING
I think you’ve guessed by now, I love this series. I cannot fault it at all, I love it, I love the world, the characters, the plots and side plots, the plot twists, the political intrigue, the backstory, the relationships, there is just so much going for it, and I am never bored.
I think it has really good pacing which is something I sometimes find off in fantasy series, I like how it goes back and forth and keeps you guessing right until the very last moment. As I have said, the writing style is wonderful, I really do enjoy reading Devri’s books and (this is going to sound cliché) but they give you the kind of nostalgic feeling that some people have for Harry Potter when they say it’s like “coming home”, this sounds kind of weird and please don’t laugh at me, but I could spend hours on end diving back into these stories, they really are a cosy, comforting read to me.
I gave this one 4.5 stars, I feel like it just lacked a tiny-teeny-weeny-little spark that the first two books gave me, but I am sure that the next one(s) will give me that 5-star sparkle again! Overall, I adored this book, I just can’t say anything bad about it, I highly recommend this to every fantasy fan and I really hope that my review of this book, and of the previous ones if you’ve read them, will convince you to pick this series up, I can see it being really big and I’m ready for the ride!
That’s all for now, I hope you enjoyed this post, see you soon, stay safe,
Ellie xx
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ASPECTS RATING
Atmosphere – 8
Start – 7
Pacing – 7
Ending – 9
Characters – 8
Theme – 7.5
Style – 8
Total = 54.5
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR – DEVRI WALLS
Devri Walls lives in Kuna, Idaho with her husband and two kids. She has worked as a music teacher and currently, a preschool teacher. She majored in theatre and her love of a story still drives her today. Thankfully, she has finally found an outlet for all the voices in her head.
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Devri’s Links: Website – Twitter – Facebook – YouTube – Instagram – Pinterest – BookBub – Amazon – Goodreads
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If you would like to purchase this book, you can find it here: Amazon UK – Amazon FR – Amazon US – AbeBooks (affiliate link) – The Book Depository (affiliate link) – Audible FR (affiliate link) – Barnes and Noble – Audible UK – Kobo
I need to get around to this series at some point, it sounds absolutely amazing.
♥ Mae
It is so goooooood! 🙂
Sounds great! 😊
Thank you!