I was really hoping that this book would improve upon the last. Vortex ended with our main cast of characters jumping to the distant future in an attempt to save Jackson's father. This results in them being trapped in the future with no obvious way to escape as there is a magical force field surrounding their area preventing the use of time travel. I was really hoping that this future setting would add some more intrigue to the story, but I was very disappointed. The future Cross describes is incredibly boring, and honestly not much different from our present, except for the unexplained lack of food. There's almost no detail to indicate that they're even in the future, no time was spent on describing the technology or history of the future the characters are trapped in, resulting in the setting being simply an uninspiring backdrop to the events occurring in the story. The poorly developed setting was not the only issue I had with this final installment. I still struggled to connect with any of the characters, Jackson in particular. I have never been a fan of Jackson, but he seems to have devolved significantly in this book. He is rude, inconsiderate, and borderline abusive to his friends, and even on occasion, his family. He always puts his own wants and needs above the fate of the world and the people in it (including, I might add, the people he claims to love so much). Basically, he is a whiny little bitch of a teenager who, in the real world, would literally never be put in a position of such responsibility like Jackson was. The rest of the characters suffered from a major lack of development as well, which was very disappointing. The only character that I felt showed any kind of change was Holly, but that change came from her being a different version than we had come to know in the first two books. Another problem I had with this book was the introduction of all the new characters trapped in the future with our established cast. Cross attempted to introduce too many characters at once, resulting in a complete lack of connection with any of them from the reader. It didn't help that Cross didn't bother to develop any of them past the point of giving them names. The only character she put any effort into was Blake, and his story took up way too much time to be anything but filler. Simply put, Blake was a plot device designed to relay important information to the main characters, and to the audience. He really served no other purpose. The book would have been exactly the same without his presence. In fact, the book wouldn't have suffered without the presence of any of these new characters. I found them all completely pointless and difficult to keep track of. I also didn't appreciate the bit about God, and how not believing in God somehow strips you of your good morals. That was bullshit and it made me angry. (I don't believe in God, and I don't appreciate having other peoples beliefs shoved down my throat, especially in my books. Believing in God is totally fine, but don't try to tell me that not believing in God makes me a less decent person than I would be if I did believe). Moving on to another issue I had with Jackson... His sudden acquiring of super speed. Cross literally gave zero explanation behind this massive plot twist. Blake says it has something to do with the brain damage that Jackson suffers when traveling to the future, and that's it. That's all the explanation we get. Cross added this sudden superpower simply as a way to have Jackson survive being shot at point blank range by his father. There was also no explanation of how Adam was suddenly alive and well and stuck in the future like the rest of them. He tells the group he had been transferred to the future to work undercover at Eyewall, but there is no other explanation as to how he was alive and why he was working undercover or why he was even in the future at all. This leads me to my final issue with this book, and really, with this entire trilogy: Julie Cross' writing. Put simply, it's terrible. It's rough and inconsistent, leading to the feeling of reading an unrevised and unedited rough first draft of a novel, instead of a completed and published one. It also reads like Cross wrote it with no outline and just made it up as she went. The actions of the characters and the "plot twists" are all too convenient to be planned in advance. And finally, the way Cross portrays the progression of time throughout the book is terrible. It's so poorly shown that events that happen over the course of days seem to take place over the course of hours or even minutes, resulting in the linear timeline feeling extremely short. They apparently were stuck in the future for about three months, but because of the ill-portrayed progression of time, it felt like only days that they were trapped there. In conclusion, I went into this book with hopes that it would improve upon the last only to be severely let down by the writing, the characters, the setting, and the plot. Would not recommend. A solid conclusion to the series. The ending was unexpected - at least for me - and I thought it tied things up well. Jackson is trapped in a date far in the future and must figure out how to save the world in addition to those he loves. Emily plays a much bigger role as do a few others.This is a pretty good timetravel series. It's definitely a little convoluted at points and I thought the different timelines could have been explained a little bit more clearly, but overall, a fun series.
What do You think about Sturm Der Zeit (2014)?
really good; see Tempest review; emotional, but good ending
—fgirl786
