The Midnight Star (The Young Elites #3)

I write these reviews at the same time as I read the books so some of the things I say end up being wrong. One thing that I think might happen, that is screaming out to me, is that Adelina is going to die sometime around the end of the book. I do not know if this is actually going to happen but she has already gone too far to be redeemed. This is especially true as after taking over as the queen she has started branding the unmarked with a hot iron to make them feel the same as the malfetto's did; to remind them of what they did (keep in mind that she is doing this indiscriminately. So even the people who never abused, who tried to help out are getting the same treatment).

Usually, books about overthrowing someone in charge are about the final act, the final person to take over and change everything for at least a few hundred years and make their country prosperous. This, however, doesn't feel the same at all and feels more like the second to last ruler who took over from the previous one but then was the same while thinking of themselves as better. Someone who is always looking for revenge isn't going to successfully be a good leader as they aren't going to be looking after their people properly (1/3 of her army was killed while invading another country because she wants to rule as much as possible). She also has a hard time understanding that love and compassion together with ruthlessness is what makes a good leader. Only having one or the other is always going to cause massive problems and make a horrible leader.

She is taking a herbal concoction to try and manage the voices in her head, and it is working, but the fact she is having to resort to that shows how far her mental deterioration has gone.

Raffaele senses energy similar to Adelina's in the water. It is killing things but it cannot be her actual energy as she is nowhere near that place. Doing some research to try and find out why this could be happening he looks and find that the world isn't as it first seemed. The fever that made all the elites malfetto's is described to be because an angel in the immortal world, called Denarius - the angel of greed - sent his brother Laetes - the angel of joy -down to the moral world as punishment for his arrogance. From what Raffaele can find the dates between when this happened and when the blood fever started killing people. It is when he starts putting more together, about how the important world and the mortal world were never meant to connect, and all the connections between them are only harming the mortal world (as it is the weaker and more vulnerable of the two).

Now, with the same energy taking over the sea he is realising that the reason this is happening is because of Queen Maeve and how power. Ripping someone who didn't have powers back wouldn't really do anything, they weren't as important in the grand scheme of things, but someone who already had part of the god's powers then being taken forcefully, that person being Enzo, is the cause of everything.

As he goes to find Violetta he sees that she is now being affected by the power and is now getting the side effect that all the young elites got when they first gained their powers, the scars covering a lot of her skin. Hers, however, seem worse than normal, as they as described as 'completely covering her arms' and also 'disappearing down her nightgown' implying that the markings are now covering her whole body and that she is being affected more brutally, for some reason, than the others.

After receiving the letter from Raffaele she doesn't believe it at first and thinks that they are just trying to trick her. And the voices perpetuate this, even if she doesn't fully believe that they are trying to trick her, the voices most definitely do.

Magiano is starting to get through to her, as she had initially dismissed the thought of ever letting someone off for something they did - not able to see the hypocrisy in her words - and yet after the guards bring her people who had committed the ultimate sin, saying the word malfetto (the horror!) she lets them off without any punishment, shocking all the people around her before using her invisibility to disappear and then fighting with the voices in her head who are now able to appear without her permission and torment her.

She ends up fighting them because the voices and the people around her convince her that it is a set-up, and it is hard to believe that it isn't in her position. But as Violetta is brought into her line of sight she loses focus and one of her own soldiers betrays her and knocks her out before she is able to react. She is told about what is happening, but even after seeing her own sister, the reason she started the conquest in the first place, she cannot agree to the terms so is thrown into the dungeon.

Enzo, being an elite, is deteriorating quicker than Tristan, who Queen Maeve had to kill because he wasn't listening to her anymore, and he breaks into Adelina's cell and she instantly realises that he isn't the same man she once knew. He has changed, and it is almost like the goddess of death is controlling him herself. Once Raffaele comes they end up defeating him and he dies and that is when Adelina realises that she really doesn't want to die and decided to help the elites protect the world as long as certain conditions she sets are met and they agree to them all. The voices still talk, but she is now having a much easier time rejecting them now that she and Raffaele are both grieving the death of Enzo.

To fight against this goddess of death merging between the two worlds they need all 12 different types of elites. Their energies, which commingle and differ, are needed and one person who they need (apart from the obvious Adelina) is someone with war energy; that person being Teren. He is quickly convinced by Adelina's words, although they still keep him chained. After an incident where he saves Magiano and Adelina's life, she decides that they can trust him a bit and assigns him to be her guard.

Through finally spending time with the people that care about her, and having experienced the fruitlessness and loneliness of leading without anyone else to lean on, having everyone around her finally is helping drag her back from her place of misery and the voices and nightmares start to dwindle.

However, days only last so long and Violetta, who had been growing weaker and weaker every day, finally succumbs to her malfetto 'defect' and perishes. All the voices, the illusions, the self-hate, starting to return. She loses track of time, and only exists physically, but mentally she can't bring herself to care much anymore. She also starts to reminisce on things that she wished she had done, things that would have meant her sister still being alive such as listening to her about the malfetto's powers slowly killing them, or not arguing with Raffaele over terms as much. But that doesn't matter, because her sister is alive and nothing she had done in the past can change that.

They enter the underworld, unsure what to expect and find monsters, which they fight off. Going through they are led through the underworld and are told that in exchange for their powers they can rectify the mortal world and seal the rift opening up between them. Adelina isn't considering doing that until she realises that her sister should also be revived as they all entered the underworld, including her sister's soul but after giving up her power she is told that her sister is dead and isn't going to be given back her life.

Adelina asks what she can do, and is given the choice of a soul for a soul. She only hesitates for a second before giving up her life for her sisters. It is the final climax to her character arc and her realisation that family and friends are better than all the power in the world, even if it was too late to save herself. She had been unwilling to part with her power at all, and the fact that her sister could do that to her scared her, yet she gave up her powers for good to save her sister. She had always valued her life over everyone else's, especially after madness started to take effect and was always trying to protect herself even from invisible threats that didn't exist, or ones that she was creating herself with her terrible leadership decisions, and yet she chose to give hers for her sister.

It was touching, to see her in her last moments with her sister reminiscing about the past, and thinking about everything she would miss. Bittersweet, I should say. It was always going to happen, she had done too many horrible things to be left alive (which is why in YA books I wish they would have more MC being the villain full time because it makes it more unpredictable over what is going to happen in books of the same genre but by other authors).

Marie Lu is excellent at making endings that tug at the heartstrings and the thoughts of Violetta, who ends up taking over a queen, and with her compassion and lack of anger at the world she is most definitely going to be a better queen than Adelina, even if it is going to take a long time to convince everyone that she is actually better, after and how she herself made a bargain with the angel of compassion about putting Adelina in the sky, as a star like she had done for her lover before. The story tells of the star lover coming down with the immortal and the two spending time together.

As we enter the last part of this book we get a letter, one that is similar to one previously in the series although this is about a star coming down from the sky, a queen, a sister, a lover, and a boy who loves that star, taking her away on horseback into the night.

Overall I really like this conclusion, a lot more than I liked the previous two instalments. It felt like the stakes were higher, and the emotions were much more profound. The change between Adelina hating everything and then by the time her mortal life ended she came to love and appreciate life is lovely. Would recommend the whole series, even if it is just to get to the ending of this book as it definitely elevates the series as a whole up a tier in my opinion.

8.3/10