beautiful chaos

beautiful chaos
the caster chronicles #3
kami garcia & margaret stohl
ya/supernatural/fantasy/romance
little brown for young readers
published 2011

Everything has an Order and when Lena claimed herself that Order was broken.  Now Gatlin is seeing the End of Days and everyone is affected.  While the town struggles under the weight of what has been done, Ethan and Lena are struggling to figure out how to stop the end of the world.  Every answer they find is one they hope isn't the answer, but there can't always be a happy ending, can't they.  And amid all the chaos Ethan is hiding the fact that he is changing.  Food doesn't taste the same, his memory is getting foggier and his dreams are haunted by death.  Even Amma isn't acting like herself and Ethan is worried she's heading to the dark side.

It was hard to get back into this one, the latest in the Caster Chronicles.  It's been awhile since I read Beautiful Darkness so I spent quite a bit of time lost or trying to remember who certain characters were.  This book is another example of how some series just need an ending.  Three books is enough and at over 500 pages each time you really should have been able to tell the story by now.  If you can't, then chances are you're dragging it out too long.

Granted, there was a lot going on in this book.

• Ethan is changing.  His favorite things to eat now make him sick.  He's forgetting things he shouldn't be forgetting and everything just has a foggy sense to it.  Not to mention the nightmares and the feeling of being stalked.
• Ridley is being mysterious and secretive.  Yes, that's not surprising, but something is going on there and you just can't tell what it could be - especially (SPOILER IF YOU HAVEN'T READ BEAUTIFUL DARKNESS) since she is no longer a Siren.
• Link is not only chasing Ridley around and trying to be all he can be for her, but he's also dealing with the change that came upon him at the end of Beautiful Darkness (he also has a short story Dream Dark about his changes).
• Amma is going crazy.  Instead of Ethan having to worry about his father, this time it's Amma who is going off the deep end.
• Marian is going to be tried and punished for her part in the Arclight incident with Liv.  Or rather, her inaction that allowed Liv to become involved.
• The search for John Breed and what he really is.
• Lena is desperate for answers about her mother and where she came from.

So yeah, 500 pages isn't really a lot when you're trying to cram all that in, but did we really NEED to cram all that in?  Probably not.  Some of it just seemed unnecessary.  Like Ridley.  She does have a big part to play in the whole John Breed stuff, but meh.

Out of the whole book my favorite was a surprise to me:  John Breed.  His character is interesting and fun and new.  We got a look at him in the last book, but it was more of a background character than someone we needed to pay attention to.  He's also the anomaly.  He's not really Dark or Light and he has just about no history.

The book leaves on quite literally a cliffhanger.  The difference this time is that the cliffhanger is pretty straightforward so if it takes another year for the next one to come out I'll probably remember enough to not be confused.  From what I can tell (and there really isn't too much info out there) there will be one last book after this one.

Keeping my fingers crossed.