The good intentions were there, I just never got to see them in action because it didn’t suit the dramatic effect, I suppose.Īrthur meant to tell Rory about the damage the pomander had made to his aura and that Rory’s magic was the only thing keeping it together, and therefore keeping Arthur alive, but first the author used the excuse of Arthur telling Rory he had something to tell him that he wasn’t ready to share, then when Rory overheard Arthur and Ellis talking about it, he asked for an explanation and Arthur seemed to be on the verge of confessing when he got “kidnapped” by the Puppeteer with the blood magic, and in the end Rory had to learn about it by the Baron. I don’t want to say it was all for nothing, but when it came time to show how far they had gone and how much they had changed, it turned up to be… halfway there, I’d say. I should’ve known it was too good to be true, after all it took Arthur being drunk for them to even have that conversation, but the next morning they were both sober and that’s when most of the real progress was made, so I had good reasons to be hopeful. The relationship started really promising in this book, there was a conversation at the beginning that had me hoping Arthur and Rory had finally learned to open up to each other in a real way, not just by declaring their mutual love for each other, but also by sharing their doubts and fears and working together to find a compromise that worked for both of them, a middle ground for all their differences. I see improvements and I don’t regret sticking with it until the end, but those improvements are inconsistent at best and I didn’t get all the answers I needed.

The series finished the same way it started, in a mix of good and bad.

Wonderstruck book