Review: Mortal Heart

Title: Mortal Heart
Author: Robin LaFevers
Publisher: HMH Books for Young Readers
Published: November 4th 2014
Series: His Fair Assassins #3
How I Served It: Hardcover
How I Got It: Purchased

"Annith has watched her gifted sisters at the convent come and go, carrying out their dark dealings in the name of St. Mortain, patiently awaiting her own turn to serve Death. But her worst fears are realized when she discovers she is being groomed by the abbess as a Seeress, to be forever sequestered in the rock and stone womb of the convent. Feeling sorely betrayed, Annith decides to strike out on her own.

She has spent her whole life training to be an assassin. Just because the convent has changed its mind doesn't mean she has..." -- Goodreads

Review:
First thought upon finishing this: Damn.

Second thought: I don't know how to feel.

I love and have loved LaFevers's trilogy since the second I picked up Grave Mercy.  To be honest I might have even fallen in love after reading the Goodreads summary. I have been waiting for Mortal Heart for what feels like forever (I'm melodramatic, remember?) and I'm having a lot of difficulties accepting that this trilogy is over. A LOT OF DIFFICULTIES.

Annith has been set aside as the odd duck out since the first book, and I'm not going to lie, I was a little skeptical going in.  The Ismae and Sybella's books both gave basically no information on her aside from how she had yet to be sent out. I did not expect her to be the most determined/strong of the girls, or the one with the oddest love story. Don't get me wrong I loved her character, but it wasn't what I had expected, and that threw me for the first few chapters.

Annith being a supreme bamf did not however, throw me as much as nearly every other twist in the book.  This review is going to be full of spoilers because I can't think of a way to get to the meat of the story without spoiling you, sorry! Anyway, what I love and have loved about LaFevers's writing is that her twists always make sense.  I had an inkling about Annith's parentage about halfway through the book... Or at least, once I got the idea in my head that Balthazaar was Mortain, I knew that Annith could not be a true daughter of Death.  The fact that Annith was the daughter of the abbess caught me a little off guard, and then the fact that Crunard of all people was her father totally shocked me.... But all of the signs were there.  In fact they had been there since the very first book. Talk about full circle!

So Annith's true father/mother reveal was a bit of a shock (for her too!), but really, I didn't find the truth about Balthazaar to be that shocking. He kind of had to be Death. Or the son of Death or something. Why else would the hellequins follow him so willingly? Why else would he have the abilities they did not?  I'm not going to lie, I had a lot of difficulty with their relationship after he revealed his true identity. I don't know why, we knew at that point that she wasn't his daughter.  I think it's because of how human LaFevers wrote him in this book as compared to the other two.  Both Sybella and Ismae encountered godlike powers.  If I remember right, and I've lent my copies out so I can't check, Mortain didn't even actually speak to them, just kind of communicated his thoughts through god-mojo.  In Mortal Heart however, Balthazaar is definitely a man.  Maybe a weird man, but a man all the same. It's hard to reconcile the man who is Annith's lover with the god who is Sybella and Ismae's father.

I can't help but wonder how weird/awkward it was for Ismae and Sybella to adjust to the whole deal.  I mean it's got to cause some mental strain for a girl who you thought was your sister to suddenly be hooking up with your dad.  Even if your dad is a God who gives up his godhood for her. Maybe especially because of that.  And we're back to the full circle thing with the end of Mortain's tenure as a god.

Now, I know I'm a cynic and stuff, and I know why LaFevers chose to end Mortain's reign as Death (so there will be no more daughters of the god and thus the story of his assassins is truly over), but... I kind of wish that he could have stayed a god and been with her anyway. I get that that's not how LaFever's world works, and that here love conquers everything ( a solid message), but a part of me still wishes that he could have kept on being Death and she could have been his killer queen or something. Oh well.  Maybe if their relationship had been developed more it wouldn't have felt as strange for him to sacrifice his immortality for her?  But then I guess their relationship had been growing since her infancy, so his devotion should not have come as quite the shock?  I don't know. I liked the development of Beast and Sybella best out of the three romances.

Aside from my inability to move past minor details, the ending was awesome.  It impresses me so much how LaFevers is able to pick vaguely obscure historical events and bend them just enough to to make it work. The idea of Annith being the sort of second coming of Arduinna is so full circle and perfect that it makes the somewhat stretch of the love arrow make sense.  I do feel bad for Anne in that she has to marry a man for whom her own feelings are unclear, but it seems implied that she will be happy and I do love any ending that implies that love conquers all. Even Death himself was bested by love.  Okay that was cheesy but you get the idea.

The Final Noodle: I really, really liked this book.  Yeah I feel kind of weird about the romance, but if I shelve those feelings then it really was a beautiful story. In terms of this being the end of a trilogy I feel like LaFevers wrapped everything up just right.  She didn't leave loose ends and nothing felt forced.  The ending happened quickly but not in a way that felt unrealistic (it's kind of hard to draw out an ending that ends with marriage and not war).  If you've read the other two, than I highly recommend Mortal Heart. If you haven't read any of them, then you're really missing out.