I received a copy of this book from the publisher via LibraryThing's Early Reviewer program in exchange for an honest review.

Julia Unbound is the third book in The Witch's Child series and I have not yet read the previous two. I've never jumped to a final book in a trilogy before so it was a little bit of an experiment - would I be able to connect to the characters without that backstory? Would I even understand what was going on?

To start off with, the book has a nice map of Spira City, where most of the action takes place, and a cast of characters and places. I love a book with a map. (I probably could even have gone for another map of the greater world, because characters' adventures in far off places are mentioned quite often). I relied on both of those quite often at the beginning to help me understand.

A very simple explanation of the plot is that there are parasites like from Stargate and The Faculty that are controlled by a queen and the main character, Julia, makes a deal to save the life of her brother: she will accept one of these parasites and spy for a world-destroying villain. In addition to this, there's a dying king, a contested crown, burgeoning revolution from multiple sides, persecuted and very angry witches, immortal beings, ancient body swappers, a shadow world, political intrigue, spies, and a dragon. There's honestly so much packed in here I read the entire thing in less than two days because I couldn't stop, I had to find out more.

Julia is a real stand out protagonist. She's strong and vulnerable, brave, upstanding, terrified, everything a teenage girl with an exploitable power to vanish and an immortal bad guy's will-bending parasite making its way slowly to her brain. She tries to do the right thing, while trying to save her free will and her brother's life, but every character has their own machinations and motivations. I even found the min-romance with the cute, pure contender for the crown Luca to be sweet. He's way out of his depth and I was oddly charmed by him, but appreciative that sex and romance were only a very small portion of the story.

I particularly liked Pia, a broken and mechanical assassin controlled by the villain, Casimir; her interactions and growing relationship with Julia were developed really well, each coming to respect and care for each other despite the roles they play at Casimir's will.

So, overall, despite a little confusion at the beginning, Julia Unbound was a fun, compulsive read full of adventure. ( )

As of writing this review I am halfway through the book. I believe I'm going to borrow the first book before I continue reading as I feel I have already missed half the story. The start of the book with all the characters having already been introduced was a little confusing. It clearly mentioned things from the first book that you would need to read to fully understand.

That being said I do enjoy the style of writing and the plot so far. Every character seems well developed and continues to grow even in just one book. However, there does seem to be a lot of characters that sometimes I do tend to forget who is who sometimes.

I will be returning to this book once I have read the first one from my local library. ( )

Literary merit: good
characterization: good
recommendations: yes
Reading level: upper high school

This was a very good book, but there were a lot of things going on. There were world shifts with characters in this world, magic, spirits, revolutions, witches, good and evil. During it all, you felt for the main character, Julia and wanted to see her succeed. It was nice that it showed some of the moral dilemmas she went through as she made her decisions. And how she would reevaluate these decisions as different things happen to her.

I started this series with the last book. I enjoyed it so much I am going to read the first two. ( )

I won this book in a giveaway and didn't realize until I received it that it was part three in a series. There was a lot of backstory that I had to figure out which made it difficult to connect with the main character. I suspect I would have enjoyed it a lot more if I had read the first two books.

The writer provides extensive detail into both the landscape and the history encompassing this novel. Her world-building is complex and rich. Thankfully there is a detailed map and the city and a list of the thirty-nine terms and characters introduced in this book. Again, someone who had read the first books would probably be familiar with most of these.

The major premise of the story focuses on Julia who, in order to save her brother, has agreed to allow a parasite to slowly infect her body and take over her brain. She has only a short time to defeat her enemy, remove a sabotaged bomb from her brother's chest, and pull out her parasite before it takes over her mind. She has a watchdog reporting back all her movements to her enemy and must secretly fight against him or her brother will be killed even sooner.

Julia becomes embroiled in a fight for the throne involving witches and other powerful beings. To complicate matters, she develops a fondness for the rightful heir while being forced to support a false claim. But Julia has a special magical skill of her own which gives her a chance to navigate through the complex and deceptive political forays.

Perhaps because the story was so detailed and I had not read the first books, I found it difficult to connect with Julia and took quite a long time to finish the novel and tackle this review. Your experience, especially if you read the first two in the series, may be different. Eden is an excellent plotter and world builder. If you enjoy complex fantasies, this series is worth looking into. ( )

I received a free copy of this book from librarything’s early reviewers program in exchange for an honest review — thank you!

So, admittedly, this is book #3 in a series, and I haven’t read the first two books. That’s on me, and I’m sure it affected my reading of the book.

Still, I found this an enjoyable, compelling read that I think fits in well with the popular YA fantasy books I’ve read. The plot is fast-moving, the worldbuilding is well done, and the characters were enjoyable to read about — particularly Julia. Will be recommending this one. ( )