Book Review: Mortal Heart by Robin LaFevers

 

Goodreads Summary: In the powerful conclusion to Robin LaFever's New York Times bestselling His Fair Assassins trilogy, Annith has watched her gifted sisters at the convent come and go, carrying out their dark dealings in the name of St. Mortain, patiently awaiting her own turn to serve Death. But her worst fears are realized when she discovers she is being groomed by the abbess as a Seeress, to be forever sequestered in the rock and stone womb of the convent. Feeling sorely betrayed, Annith decides to strike out on her own.
She has spent her whole life training to be an assassin. Just because the convent has changed its mind doesn’t mean she has.

Goodreads Ratings: 4.11 stars with over 22,000 reviews

Genre Listing: Fantasy, Romance, Young Adult, Historical Fiction, Adventure, Mythology

Previous Reviews on the Series: Grave Mercy, Dark Triumph (As a warning, both of these reviews are several years old. I don't really go back in and update posts very often.)

Goodreads Challenge: 24/50

2021 Reading Challenge: #42 Read a book with the letter V in the title or Author's name (find the entire challenge here) 

Book Review:

Happy Fourth of July to all of my American readers! Happy Belated Canada Day to my neighbors to the North. I am so delighted it's Friday and that it's a long weekend. I somehow want to be really lazy all weekend, but also really productive. We'll see which one wins out. 

A bit of background story is necessary before I get into the review for Mortal Heart. I initially read the first two books of the trilogy back in 2014 or 2015. At the time, I either read them on Kindle Unlimited or from the library, but I can't remember which. I absolutely loved them and read through them pretty fast, but I wasn't willing to spend $10 on Mortal Heart just yet. I ended up breaking down and buying all three books not that long ago and reread Grave Mercy for #3 for this year's challenge. I was reminded of why I loved the book so much that I declared it my favorite book. I have a tough time declaring things my favorite, so this is a pretty big compliment from me. After that, I went on to read other things. A week or two ago, I was at a dentist appointment and got talking books with the Dental Assistant while waiting on the Doctor to see me. The books she recommended to me were all Assassin-based, so I recommended this series to her. After recommending it, I had it on my brain, so I reread Dark Triumph.

I actually think I liked Dark Triumph more than the first time I read it. I think I was able to appreciate her dark past a lot more this time around. There were also a lot of details I completely missed the first time around. As soon as I finished Dark Triumph, I had to dive into Mortal Heart. It was late, and I got very little sleep that night.  Such is my life.

I wasn't sure I'd like Mortal Heart nearly as much as I did the other two books in the His Fair Assassin series, but I really enjoyed this book by Robin LaFevers. I haven't been feeling very well and haven't been sleeping because of it. So Tuesday night, I ended up being up until 3am reading this book because I felt worse when I tried to sleep, and the book was too good to put down. I took a half-day Wednesday to rest and sleep in (this is all relevant, I swear.) When I woke up in the morning, I had like an hour and a half before I had to sign on to my computer for work (yay working from home!). Yeah, This book is so good that I was reading it before work, which is a thing that never happens. 

I really expected Annith to be unlikable as the main character. She came across as snooty in the previous books, and I felt like she was a showoff. I ended up really liking her. She was really guarded in the first two books, and not a lot was known about her background story. There ends up being a lot of abuse and secrets that she hid from Ismae and Sybella. This results in a lot of plot twists. Some of them were pretty predictable, but there were a couple that ended up being pretty shocking.

I think out of the three primary relationships in the trilogy, Annith's ended up being my favorite. It gave a unique spin on the series that I wasn't expecting. I won't give too many details about her lover, but he has definitely more of the broody bad boy type than the other girls' love interests. In addition to the romance, we also got a peek into other followers of the various Gods of Breton. There was a lot more background into the mythology, which I found really interesting. 

Mortal Heart gave a really fascinating look at Mortain's other followers called the Hellequin. This group of undead is painted as this fearsome delinquents, but one of the main messages of this book is that nothing is as it seems, first impressions can be wrong, and dark doesn't mean bad tropes. 

In addition to all of the mythology, assassins, and romance, there's also some history thrown in for fun! The historical period covered is during Anne of Brittany's reign as Duchess and how she becomes the French Queen Consort. Of course, author liberties were taken, but Robin LaFevers' does a great job after each book explaining where she took these and provides some truth to the history. It's incredibly well researched, from what I can tell, but I'm no expert. I really can't say enough good things about this book or the trilogy. Overall, this was an excellent conclusion to the series. I did learn, there is a duology as well. I think it follows Sybella's story more, but I'm not sure if Ismae and Annith make appearances.