I have so many feelings.

Also it's nice to have memories because wow did I have very few of those for this installment! I definitely clung to very few recollections of any events post-book one and honestly it made the whole experience feel like the first time. I kind of love that this is how it went down.

<i>In the legends, chimaera were sprung from tears and seraphim from blood, but in this moment they are, all of them, children of regret.</i>

I can definitely see why this ending made many readers mad and I think I'm somewhere in the middle. There was definitely A Lot jammed in right at the end but it also didn't feel too rushed. It was just a hard left when you think you're going right. But also, I kind of love it? Like another series I read recently which took a lot of unexpected and not-so-popular and very risky choices, I feel this was one of those. And I guess in my old age I'm appreciating the unconventional a little more.

<i>It was a new idea for him, that happiness wasn't a mystical place to be reached or won -- some bright terrain beyond the boundary of misery, a paradise waiting for them to find it -- but something to carry doggedly with you through everything.</i>

Plus, having read her more recent series, I think I finally understand the tie-in. It's nothing to the extent that you need to read one to read the other but. Something. I'm not spoiling anything but I had a moment and then my brain tried to remember the ending of MUSE OF NIGHTMARES and I sprained something, so that was a bust, but. I feel another Taylor reread coming on.

Anyway, I just had such a good time, truly. There's not going to be any kind of insightful breakdown or poetical word weaving in this review. Taylor's writing is gorgeous. She loves to torment her characters (and us). There is plenty of darkness but always hope. And there are moments of such silliness, such every-day-ness by having certain "normal" persons woven in amongst all the monsters and magic, gods and other worlds, that it just grounds everything. It all just works.

"<i>You are a conniving, deceitful hussy. I stand in awe.</i>"
"<b>You're sitting.</b>"
"<i>I sit in awe.</i>"

I do think, in hindsight of this reread, I might love the Strange the Dreamer duology more. But I would need to reread that one to confirm my five stars are still five stars. Because this series did lose a star from each book during this experience. I still love them, and will likely revisit again in a couple years, but sometimes the bowled over and devastated or delirious feeling doesn't quite come back. Nonetheless, I had so much fun rereading these, and it was absolutely everything I needed right now.