Ascend (Book #3 of the Trylle Trilogy) by Amanda Hocking and Jason Letts

From Amazon –

With a war looming on the horizon, Wendy’s fate seems sealed. But everything she sacrificed might be in vain if she can’t save the ones she loves. Her whole life has been leading up to this, and it’s all coming to an end.

The culmination of weeks and months, finally the end is here. Actually, when you sit back and realize that it truly has been only a few months since Wendy discovered she is the future Queen of Trylle it could almost give you whiplash thinking of all that has happened. No less than 3 men have fallen for her, she found out she was not only the daughter of a Troll queen, but of an incredibly evil Troll king, she’s been kidnapped, betrothed, and survived numerous attacks. That’s a lot for a teenager! Heck, that’s a lot for any person, but such is the life of a heroine of a YA novel.

Ascend, in particular, is full of action. There’s lots of planning and sneaking, deals made and broken, marriages, and general uproar. At times it feels as if things are moving very quickly, and at other times like nothing happens of any consequence for pages and pages. The pacing is off, and the ending feels rushed. However, all in all, I found it to be a satisfying conclusion.

As in other books in this series, I find the characterization to be off. Elora becomes a sympathetic, compassionate mother who only wants her daughter to be happy? I’m fairly certain that’s not the same woman we met in Switched. Hocking gives reasons for this in the book, but they just doesn’t ring true. I get the feeling that the author writes her characters to serve the plot, rather than allowing her characters to guide the plot. They appear to change because they need to in order to serve whatever purpose she needs done at the time. That, or she never gets a clear picture of who her characters are in the first place.

And of course, the romance plots are wrapped up fairly neatly. Though, not as I originally expected as they would. I certainly won’t give that away. I still never did really like Wendy as a character, she was too inconsistent and childish. I give Ascend a 3 out of 5.

I found this series to be an easy read; I read all of them in less than a week. For the price on Kindle, they were certainly worth it.