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Spoils Alert

General Opinion:.

I WOULD RATHER GET SHOT IN THE CHEST THAN REREAD THIS BOOK. IT KILLS ME, AND LEAVES A HOLLOW IN MY BOOK. ​

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​Characters and Plot

I know what was coming, I know Rin was going to kill herself, I know Rin would be consumed by her power, I know Rin would grow distrust of Kitay near the end, and I WAS STILL NOT READY. In this book, we get to see Rin's humanity slip day by day; she stops fighting for her people, even though that is what she is telling herself. Rin is fighting for revenge against the boy who had hurt her so badly, Nezha, and yet every time Rin gets a chance to kill him, she couldn't go through with it, nor could he. 

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Rin first tried to get the trust of her people, and by driving away the Mugenese from the South, she earned it, but after not being able to feed her people, they soon despised her. Rin was spiralling each time I turned a page, and it was a punch in the gut. The way at the end, she refused the aid from Hesperians because she refused to be shackled to the Hesperians, and Rin didn't trust Nezha, after the betrayal he pulled. 

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By the end, Rin was almost consumed by the Phoenix, barely holding up to her human side. The only thing that was human in her was her love for Kitay, and how she could never kill Nezha, those loves, the Phoenix was never be able to touch it, because Rin, the real Rin, was a girl with a big heart, she love so much, that even though those she love hurt her, she could never kill them. 

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That one scene where Rin let the mob tear Souji apart, my blood went cold at that. I know why Rin saw it as necessary to earn fear from her people, to make sure that no one could betray her. But did Souji deserve that, no, definitely that, I grew to like him when he proposed smart tactics to help Rin reclaim the South, just for Souji to betray her. This scene shows how Rin was betrayed and used so many times that this is survival intact for her now; every time a person betrayed her, she broke, and Nezha's betrayal hit the hardest. 

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Any time Rin and Nezha interact in this book kills me, knowing what they could have been. Specifically, that scene where Nezha, Rin, and Kitay were just drinking together, laying down their arms for one night, it was a stab in the gut, knowing that was just temporary, and what came was going to be much worse. Venka's death... Oh boy, I know Venka is not going to make it. I thought she was going to die in some battles, but to think Rin was the reason she died just shatters me. By the end, Rin was so paranoid that she thought everyone was her enemy, even Venka and Kitay. 

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But I didn't shed tears for any of those, yet I burst out crying on the last 5 pages. When they were on Speer and the lightning hit Rin, stripping away her divinity, her God, and all that was left was just Rin, the Rin at Sinegrad, I cried. Because the real Rin was back, and she was going to kill herself to save her country, knowing that if she lived, she would just burn everything away, either by herself or being forced by a lord. After 2 years of battling a god, Rin was free, and her first act was letting go, for Kitay, for her country. The action was so Rin that I sobbed, seeing what Rin could be if she wasn't being thrown into war, if she wasn't possessed by the Phoenix. The moment the Phoenix left her, Rin was horrified that she was going to hurt Kitay, because the real Rin would never, and she would never hurt him. 

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​​​​​​​​​​​Conclusion

Rin is a brutally realistic representation of how war and power can change someone, of how people never progress in war, like everyone expects them to, but they regress, they make worse decisions as time goes by, and the more they fight, the more of their humanity. When Rin finally let go, she regained her humanity, coming back to the brave, strong will girl we know in book 1. It breaks me that she was only there for 5 pages, and then she died. Rin and Nezha could have been a beautiful couple, but the war never made it happen. 

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