My 44th read of the year was Restless Stars by Susanne Valenti & Caroline Peckham, which was the final book in the Zodiac Academy series! It’s done! I’ve finally finished it!
You can read my review of the rest of the series, including novellas here.
Obviously, major, major spoilers, there is no way to summarise this without spoiling events up to about book 7 I’d say.
Plot summary attempt
We pick up immediately after Tory has returned with Darius, reunited with Darcy and the story begins in the aftermath of the twins defeating the strange creatures Lionel invaded Zodiac Academy with. The Stars choose this auspicious moment to speak to them and offer them a choice, they can return the imperial Star to the heart of the fallen Star it was taken from but risk that Star assumming a fae body and walking among the fae, which is guaranteed to cause havoc. Or, they keep the imperial stars power for themselves and curse another generation of Vega’s.
The twins choose to walk their own path, free from this curse affecting their fate and are immediately trapped underground by the Star, who assumes their faces and heads out into the world. They escape to find that the Star has already caused destruction whilst wearing their likeness, but Lionel doesn’t believe the twins would hurt weaker orders because they are weak themselves, so he figures out it is a Star, so he sets out to bargain with it.
The twins begin a co-ordinated approach with the help of the heirs and Geraldine, finding allies by freeing fae from the inquisition centres, approaching the unbound nymphs to see if they will fight, whilst also learning more about Ether and the how to activate the guild stones. Now they are free from this Star cursing their fate, they begin to try and ensure that fate will be on their side by giving themselves every advantage in the coming battle. All while they destabilise Lionel’s rule and try to lessen his advantage over them.
After a series of strategic smaller battles, we finally come to the big fight, where the twins, the heirs and the rebel army make their final stand.
My review
Honestly? I liked the end, I like the way Lionel finally bites the dust. However, we did not need over 110 chapters to achieve it. I found the same issue with this as I did 8, it was full on long, drawn out monologues where one characters is lamenting about how much they care about another character and it honestly took the momentum out of some really big moments that would have otherwise been highly emotional just because of the events that were happening. We KNOW how much you care about each other, we just spent 8 books learning that! This was happening in the big battle and felt like it really took away from some of the really big moments. Also, a washer chapter? Totally un-fucking necessary mid battle. I felt exhausted and impatient reading it, I’ll be honest, I just wanted it to end.
I’m kind of disappointed because I really enjoyed 1-7 of this series, but 8 and 9 were too long and drawn out. One of the things I liked about this series and these authors is that we do get lots of those little extra scenes and peeks into the character’s lives that don’t necessarily drive the plot but these books were really long without actually having much of that. It felt like they were trying to hold us in this heightened state of emotion for well over a thousand pages and at some point it loses it’s impact.
I liked the little glimpse that we get into their life post win though, I thought that was cute way to tie it all off.
Anyway, that’s it, we’ve finally reached the end of Zodiac Academy, I might take a small break from these authors before tackling their next series. Because I do love the world they have built and the way they tell the stories, but I do find they could do with being a liiiiitle harsher with the edits.
Antonia Bernardin 