This was such a good end to the trilogy, and I'm so sad to part ways with the Rumba folks. I'll be counting on the Shadowshaper novels to let me know how everyone's doing. :)

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Read Harder: fantasy novel ( )

Battle Hill Bolero
Author: Daniel Jose Older
Publisher: ROC by Berkely via Penguin Random House
Publishing Date: 2017
Pgs: 320
Dewey: PBK F OLD
Disposition: Irving Public Library - South Campus - Irving, TX
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REVIEW MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS

Summary:
The dead and the half-alive have been under the thumb of the Council of the Dead for a long time. And that thumb has become more constrictive and more controlling and seems to be reaching for more power all the time. A revolution is brewing among the ghouls, ghosts, and spirits of New York City. The Council has become more and more involved in the shady deals that they are purportedly supposed to be preventing or policing. A war is coming.
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Genre:
Ghosts
Dark Fantasy
Urban Fantasy

Why this book:
Cause I read the first two and loved them.
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The Feel:
Incredible.

It is easy to fall back into the rhythms of Soulcatcher Carlos DeLaCruz’s life.

Favorite Character:
Mama Esther is my favorite.

The throng haints. They’re ghost, spirit devourers that are many tentacled clouds of mouths. And then they capture and devour another etheral presence, it is added to the throng haint. Sometimes you can see the person who was devoured still in the monster, screaming as it is both devoured and used by the monster to devour others. ...awesome.

Least Favorite Character:
Flores...for being as much of the BBG in this one as he is, even though he is just one of the BBGs, he just isn’t. He’s got a cool look. But he comes across as weak. Course, considering his backstory, that might be right in line with who and what he is. He made a deal with a devil...and it didn’t turn out like he expected. Then, he made a deal with the Council and same...and then, he made a deal with a potentially worse devil...he’s an idiot.

Plot Holes/Out of Character:
I get wanting to know what Flores knows. But Sasha going for a walk with him into more and more dangerous territory isn’t smart. Especially in light of Big Cane disappearing.

Favorite Scene / Quote/Concept:
Mama Esther’s last stand.

Hmm Moments:
Good to see the Council going to get theirs. Who died and left them in charge?

For being on a war footing, Cyrus’s war council sure is too trusting. And for a buncha ghosts and half-deads, they’re putting too much trust in the living.

Meh / PFFT Moments:
Seeing the return of the cockroach man’s sister is meh. Woulda been okay with moving on from all that.

Juxtaposition:
I love the whole “their friends are our friends/their enemies are our enemies” feel that emanates from these books.

The Unexpected:
Damn...the Council is in bed with the Roach Demon’s sister. Wow. I knew they were shit, but I thought they were just bureaucratic shit.

Movies and Television:
This shouldn’t be a movie because they’ll never do it justice.
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Pacing:
The pace is great.

Last Page Sound:
Awesome. Wish there were more.

Questions I’m Left With:
But as we spin toward the story’s climax, weren’t the Faceless and the Roach Witch going to take a run at Sasha and Carlos’s twins? Why did the attack on the twins play out off camera?

Author Assessment:
Lives up to the previous installments. Will definitely be reading more of Older’s stuff.

Editorial Assessment:
Well done.
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I think on this one Older had too many narrators. I couldn’t get into the story as much because it was made up of too many threads and not enough connections. I felt like it dragged, although it took me less time to read than some of the others in the series. But it did wrap the series very nicely. I’m glad it had a satisfying ending.
For additional reviews please see my blog at www.adventuresofabibliophile.blogspot.com

Man, that book FLEW by. Amazing stuff, great end to the series. Everyone came together so well and I enjoyed the daylights out of the whole thing. In fact, I will give it the highest of compliments - I did not think about checking my phone once while reading this.... ( )

The dead now rise… up.

The Council has had its own way for too long. Too many souls have been lost. Too much injustice has been swallowed. The Remote districts, the rebels, the dispossessed are rising up – war is coming.

Of course Carlos, half dead, memoryless and very much adrift – is in the middle of this; even as his own history and murky past come crashing around him.

There’s a lot about this book series I love – which are continued excellently in this book. I love many of the characters and the conflicts they face and the lives they’ve lead. I love their voices and the excellent solid realness behind so many of them. Most of the main cast feel like people, complete people, not extras to advance someone else.

Most of the cast are also POC with their cultures, races and origins clearly labelled. As I’ve said before, this book series does so well with racial diversity because it doesn’t just use racial labels as brief descriptors but not involving them in their actual depiction. We have several latino characters (and “latino” is not just a wide vague descriptor but we have notes on the different South American and Carribean nations and cultures that are covered by that label), Black characters, Native Americans, Asians – there is a huge racial diversity in New York City and this is reflected in this series

The ghosts themselves have so many different and excellent little factions – from the poignant spirits of the Black Hoodies – ghosts killed by police, to the ancient, slow incomprehensible and enigmatic ancient ghosts, to the calm and powerful ex-slaves to the fluffy and slightly silly cyclists who died in traffic accidents. All little societies coming together for reasons both meaningful and silly and all very human.

It’s these characters continuing their story from the previous books which truly make this series – not just Carlos and Sasha but the many powerful characters around them as well. But still, Sasha and Carlos’s examination of their past, both the revelations and how they dealt with it – and how they then relate to each other given their very very very very oh-so-very complicated history – are an excellent part of the book (if almost tangential to the main story). Especially with Juan Flores mixing it up even further.

The plot itself had large amounts of epic elements as well. We have a grand conflict, with sacrifice and loss and desperation and power and passion. It was at times very emotional, often very moving and often blood-fizzling exciting

What did make it harder for me to follow this book is that there’s such a huge number of characters in this book. This is the book where everything comes to a head and we have the full blown conflict with all kinds of factions and forces coming together

But I think that this would work better if we moved it to maybe 3 books in the future it would be better. We have all these many factions, all of these different groups and districts and people all with their own grievances against the council along with other supernatural beings like the River Giants –but all of them feel a bit out of the blue. They’ve all just appeared: the relatively narrow story we had about Carlos and his close associates has now exploded to include all these vast new cast members who are either completely new or had relatively minor roles before. But the way they’re written almost implies we should know them or be invested in them or even get the conflict each personally faces. It feels almost like book three there was a sudden decision to tell a whole different story but there were these two other inconvenient prequels to fit in somehow.

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