First Book of the Year

 A Reaper at the Gates by Sabaa Tahir 

I carried this book around in my bag for a month and didn't crack it open. I was looking forward to reading it, was excited about it, but couldn't get in the right frame of mind to actually read it. Then, when I finally did read it, I blew through it in two days. We have action, adventure, love, loss, life, death, finding yourself, new alliances being formed, old alliances breaking, and a dawning understanding that what we thought we knew we didn't actually know. That didn't make what happened with and to our three main characters any easier to handle. Laia and Darin are running for their lives. Elias is in the waiting place and fighting embracing it until he can't fight it anymore. I hate what he becomes at by the end of the book. How are he and Laia going to get a happy ending if he is fully the Soul Catcher? And Cain, the arguer hand picked Laia, Elias, and Helene to what? set the jinn free but stop Keris from taking power but not let the jinn destroy everything once they have been set free? It's so confusing. All of the arguers except for Cain end up dead. Marcus is dead. Keris is still alive. Livia is alive and is now a mother. Helene gave up her mask which was the final piece of the star. Darin is making the special blades for the scholars. The arguer's are the reason that everything is the way it is; they are the ones who imprisoned the jinn all those thousand years ago and stole their power and they led to the rise of the Nightbringer, the slaughter of the scholars is because Cain was the scholar king who killed and imprisoned the jinn. All of this is his fault. And now there is a tribe that has magicians that can raise ghosts. Like, it's a lot. Laia is with Helene. We finally learn who Cook is; it's Laia's mother who we thought was dead but wasn't, but now is because she sacrificed herself so that Laia and Helene could escape. And Elias is just a shell of who he once was. I have no idea what or where or how this series is going to end and I cannot wait to find out. I am on the edge of my seat!