This review is for those who have read or are familiar with the previous six books in the Keeper of the Lost Cities series, or don't mind knowing spoilers for them.
SPOILER ALERT
Sophie Foster doesn’t know what—or whom—to believe. And in a game with this many players, the worst mistake can be focusing on the wrong threat.
But when the Neverseen prove that Sophie’s far more vulnerable than she ever imagined, she realizes it’s time to change the rules. Her powerful abilities can only protect her so far. To face down ruthless enemies, she must learn to fight.
Unfortunately, battle training can’t help a beloved friend who’s facing a whole different danger—where the only solution involves one of the biggest risks Sophie and her friends have ever taken. And the distraction might be exactly what the villains have been waiting for.
I didn't mean to let so much time pass before continuing the series, but I guess it's better late than never? Honestly, I was dreading this one. The title and cover image kinda evoke hints at time travel, and though it wasn't mentioned in the summary, I haven't had the best track record with time travel working out right... But maybe if it works, I won't have had such a long break between books! Haha, but really, I guess it's best to just jump in.
I can report there is no time travel. At least in this book—I haven't ruled it out for the series as a whole yet.
That this book does have is an exploration of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). If you'll recall, this series tried a bit of exploration into mental health back in Exile, when Alden suffered a mental break (a shattering) due to his guilt. This time, Sophie herself has to deal with the consequences of trauma, specifically fear and panic attacks. But while I appreciated the effort made to tackle this heavy subject, like so many of the heavy subjects before, I felt the payoff didn't quite hold up.
The story and physicians do a good job of highlighting the panic attacks and methods to work through them—avoiding triggers, breathing techniques, medications for sleep, and support from friends & family—but by affixing the trauma to something magic-based, they also seem to apply a magical solution to it. It's not completely clear if the solution works (as the ending swerves to another issue entirely), but there's a clear indication that Sophie is mostly back to normal following the magical cure, which serves to diminish the severity of the issue in the first place. I get not wanting to have your young characters suffering debilitating problems, but it's kinda insulting to play with real mental health issues like this.
I realize that elves don't have mental health services, since they're supposedly super fragile when it comes to stress, guilt, or trauma, but as the books continue forward, it becomes more and more clear that this isn't the case. Not only do we have the Neverseen committing heinous acts on the reg, but even The Black Swan is burdened with stress, grief, and seems to have done so for years. Even if you don't want to backtrack on having psychiatrists/therapists in elf culture, with Sophie working with the other species this would have been a great opportunity to address their methods for mental health. Surely warrior species might have therapy professionals or other methods for getting through trauma? I'd have loved if Sophie had gotten tips from Ro or Sandor or had a full-on therapy session with another species.
And who knows, that may be a thing in the future. As with most series, it's hard to complain when you're in the middle of things and there's still (much) more to come. After all, there are still 3 whole books (and at least one novella) still to come, and surely more traumatic events to occur. It's my hope that therapy does come into the series at some point, just to show a real-world method for treating these real-world problems that these fantasy characters keep meeting. Like I said, if you're gonna introduce kids to real mental health issues, treat them with respect and please don't solve them with magic cures.
But then, that's one of the tricky things about introducing ideas and themes to kids: where do you draw the line between introduction and break down, between fantasy and allegory. I've had the same issue with the constant sociopolitical murmurs progressing through the series, and I still don't know if it's quite turned the corner into full YA territory yet. With character deaths, some legitimate trauma, and some hard conversations surrounding future policy, you'd think this had finally made the step across the line, yet there's still the pull back with assigning magical cure-alls to various problems. This is probably just me being all old and curmudgeonly, since I'm far from the age demographic these books are aiming for, but again, I guess we'll have to wait and see.
Another thing that had me feeling a bit curmudgeonly was the pacing. The majority of the book is pretty slow, with a lot of time (understandably) taken up with Sophie's recovery. But the chapters still do a good job of leaving just enough surprise or tension to have the reader itching to jump into the next one, so I really didn't have any issues getting through it. Where I did have issues was during the climax, where characters seemed more than happy to have 5-minute dialogues in the middle of their (supposedly) tense stand-offs. Like, do their arms ever get tired while they're talking? I get that there's a lot of information and revelations you've got to get out while the heroes and villains are finally in the same space, but maybe have a reason for them to be standing around talking? Instead it's like they've got weapons and magic raised Mexican-stand-off-style while they're going back and forth for pages and pages of dialogue. Thinking about how this would look on screen had me giggling at how ridiculous it'd look.
At least the romance is no longer at a complete stand-still. No longer do we have to suffer through Sophie being utterly blind to all flirts and advances from her peers! Not that waiting is in and of itself a bad thing (I read one series where the two main characters didn't hook up until book nine), but for it to be such a major thing in so many books, in so many scenes, and to have three or four viable options, it was getting kind of ridiculous. So I'm happy that Sophie can finally be honest and intelligent on that front, even if not all of her suitors are... So yeah, it's moving forward, but it's definitely not decided.
And, unfortunately, that's what the book ends off on. Yeah, kinda weird to have a book largely surrounding trauma and PTSD end on a cliffhanger about romance, but here we are. I will say I think the cliffhanger was a bit obvious, considering all that had been discussed about it before I'm not sure why it came as a surprise to anyone, but that doesn't make it any less effective in making the next book more enticing.
Overall, this was a fine continuation of the series. I thought it did a good job exploring some serious issues relevant to the children (15+) going through what is essentially guerilla warfare, but I found the resolution to those issues did detract from their overall impact. Still, fans of the series will no doubt enjoy continuing Sophie's story through its twists and turns, revelations and romance. Things definitely take a darker turn this book, with a particularly gruesome scene which sparks Sophie's PTSD, but I think the series has been ramping up somewhat so the tone shouldn't come as a complete shock to younger readers (though it is definitely straddling the line between MG and YA). As for me, I'll be jumping straight into the next book to get that cliffhanger resolved as soon as possible. Until next time!
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