I love this series and this finale was everything I hoped for! The world-building, the romance, and the epic story are amazing! I tell everyone I can to read this series!

This was a great conclusion to the series. I loved how this story begins right where book three ended. I enjoyed all the adventures and prose. I definitely recommend this book.
Thank you Netgalley and St. Martin Press for this ARC.

What happens when two kingdoms divided by a magical barrier, one free and scared of magic, one ruled by the ruthless All father and filled with magic singers are no longer separated?

This is the finale of a quartet. There are so many POVs throughout the series. Some only last a book, some through the whole series. I personally love that. Overall, it was well done and the world building was 👍🏽 this installment is definitely the best of the series but I will admit it was a bit cheesy at times. I can’t go into too much detail (spoilers) but I felt like everything came together and it was everything I could have wanted in a conclusion. I’m very excited to see what L Penelope writes next!

the Earthsinger Chronicles series has been one of the most fun reads that I've had the pleasure to read in a while. This book was a lot of fun and had the character development that I enjoyed from the previous book.

I was lucky enough to interview L. Penelope and several other authors who write fantasy romance, and it was an amazing experience. This is one of the later books in her series, but her lush world building and amazing characters are excellent as usual

This was honestly the perfect conclusion to the series. It was so bittersweet and I may or may not have cried multiple times throughout, but it was also filled to the brim with hopefulness. Zeli and Varten allowed each other to grow in ways neither of them expected and it was really heartwarming to read their stories. Kyara and Jasminda are always welcome narrators, and it was really fascinating to learn more about Oola's and Eero's family dynamics. The political atmosphere of this story was fraught with tension, and the ending didn't perfectly resolve everything but instead made it seem very real. I was in love with the story from the first to the last page and I thought this was the strongest book in the series. L. Penelope created such an amazing series and ended it in such a satisfying way.

Ah, I hated to see this series end but shout out to L. Penelope for giving us such iconic characters and their stories.

This last book ends with Queen Jasminda still trying to integrate the Lagrimarian's into Elsira AND the final "battle" between the True Father Jasminda and Kyara.

Listen, this book is full of action, and its face paced. You will get drawn into this book as well as the previous ones pretty quickly. But, of course...I do have my issues. I'm all for authors giving us flawed characters but Kyara and her family drama was just that...drama. For all the extra we got with her, we could have gotten more story on Jasminda's husband and what he was doing to bring this all to a close. Like why we ain't get enough of him until like the end????

Anyolways, this is a entertaining story... an entraining series. Now, I will tell you not to go into this series without reading the previous book. This is a series that needs to be read "in order"

L. Penelope's word play in this series is bomb.com. here take on racial dynamics, xenophobia and other topics are done well AND with care. We get some tying up of folks stories somewhat in this last book but for the most part, I'm not mad at the ending of this series.

It's an amazing one and highly recommended by this reader.

Title: Requiem of Silence
Author: L. Penelope
Genre: Fantasy
Rating: 4.5 out of 5

Civil unrest plagues the nation of Elsira as refugees from their old enemy Lagrimar seek new lives in their land. Queen Jasminda is determined to push the unification forward, against growing opposition and economic strife. But the True Father is not finished with Elsira and he may not be acting alone. He has built a powerful army. An army that cannot be killed. An army that can only be stopped by Nethersong and the help of friends and foes of Elsira alike.

Former assassin Kyara will discover that she is not the only Nethersinger. She will need to join the others to harness a power that can save or end Elsira. But time is of the essence and they may not be ready by the time the True Father strikes.

Sisterhood novitiate Zeli will go to the reaches of the Living World to unlock a secret that could save the kingdoms. When armies meet in the battlefield, a new world will be forged. Whether by the hands of gods or men, remains to be seen

I’ve really enjoyed the Earthsea Chronicles series, and I’m sad to see it end. I love how all the cultures are blended together and explore their differences as well as their commonalities. The characters and settings are vibrant and detailed, and the storyline has been wonderfully explored in-depth, making this a series I highly recommend.

Leslye Penelope lives in Maryland. Requiem of Silence is her newest novel.

(Galley courtesy of St. Martin’s Press in exchange for an honest review.)

4 stars

You can read all of my reviews at Nerd Girl Loves Books.

This is a satisfying last book in a great fantasy series. Jasminda and Kyara face their final showdown with the True Father, who remains determined to conquer Elsira. Recently escaped from the palace dungeons, and potentially getting help from his twin sister The Goddess Awoken, the True Father has a new army of wraiths that can't be killed and can only be stopped by Nethersong and the help of Earthsingers.

Like Elsira needed any more problems. Jasminda's husband is on a mission to garner new allies and she is keeping a tenuous hold on her crown. The civil unrest between Elsirians and the Lagrimar refugees attempting to settle in Elsira is heating up. Jasminda must figure out a way to keep Elsira from splintering apart in civil war and fight the True Father for the future of the entire kingdom. With the help of Kyara, and a young sisterhood novitiate Zeli, they may find a way to help the people of Elsira and Lagrimar, as well as defeat the True Father, for good.

This book is fast-paced and full of action. I was a little disappointed that Jasminda's husband was basically absent for 98% of the book. I enjoyed reading about him in the first book. Kyara and a young Lagrimar girl join the Cave Folk again to learn how to harness and control their power. This part of the book seemed to slow the story down and make it drag a bit. I also grew impatient with all of the inner turmoil in Kyara, as well as all of her family drama. Again, it seemed to slow the story down and could have been abbreviated to sustain momentum. I get it that Kyara needed to heal and feel worthy of having a happy life, but get on with it already! But these were minor annoyances that didn't affect my overall enjoyment of the book.

Overall, this was an entertaining, fun book series to read that I recommend you pick up. I look forward to reading more books from this author.

I received a complimentary copy of this book from NetGalley and St. Martin's Press. All opinions are my own.

I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley and am voluntarily posting a review. All opinions are my own.

Requiem of Silence is the conclusion to L. Penelope’s Earthsinger Chronicles, and it’s definitely an epic one. We once again meet some new characters, while also following some old friends again once last time.

I do think it would help if I had read the previous books to refresh my memory, as this book kind of throws you into the action, leaving you to try to recollect what happened in the prior books. However, I did eventually come to grips with the tense political situation the characters are in, conveyed through context clues in the text.

I love how this book has continued to show Jasminda and Jack continuing their work to heal the discord in Elsira. Alongside the continuation of their story arc, I enjoyed meeting the new characters and what they added to the story. Kyara particularly stood out to me, due to the trauma she’s dealt with. And I really liked that Zeli is proof that skill is not the only thing that can make a fantasy protagonist compelling, but kindness and good intentions can be just as important.

Generally, this book is a satisfying conclusion to the series, resolving issues in a way that provides closure, while still leaving things open about the future. If you enjoyed the prior installments, you won’t be disappointed with this one.

DNF. I really liked the premise but the writing did not work for me at all. It wouldn't be fair to the book if I finished reading and gave it a low rating.

Requiem of Silence (Earthsinger Chronicles #4)
by L. Penelope
A very detailed and well thought out universe. This book shows the struggle in history of this new ideological world that has had a devastating overwhelming battle between gods. the connection of the people and their gods is made through song, blood, and death. the book shows how having power makes people corrupts. The gods were men, and women, they found a way not to die through the use of magic promoted by song, blood, and sacrifice. Very thought provoking story that shows how perceptions can divide and separate people. The world is divided arbitrarily because of perceptions of the needs of the Gods, or those magicians that could not die but affect the world long after they should have passed on.

Requiem of Silence is the fourth and final book* in the Earthsinger Chronicles, a really interesting series by author L Penelope. The series began with two novels (Song of Blood and Stone and Whispers of Shadow and Flame) which were very much fantasy romances, even though they dealt with serious themes of race, refugees, nationalism, and more to a certain extent. The third book, Cry of Metal and Bone shifted near entirely to epic fantasy - with there still being a very prominent romantic subplot**, but with the plot dealing with so much else - conflicts of life and death, integration of two peoples, refugees, racism, propaganda, foreign interference and differences of cultures. Essentially each book in this season has gotten more and more ambitious, with the first book's setting feeling barebones and the third book's feeling overflowing with ideas and potential, and I've only enjoyed each of these books more and more.

*There are also three novellas in the series, none of which I've had the opportunity to read although I may change that fact. By their descriptions the novellas develop some important side characters and their events are referred to in these books, but not necessary to understand them.*

**Every Romance in this series is M-F, for what it's worth. There are no LGBTQ characters of note in the series as far as I can recall.**

So it should be no surprise that Requiem of Silence, the finale, tries to do a lot with a lot of characters, and that it's romance subplot is the least developed of any of the series. The result is mixed - there are a lot of interesting themes here - again of dealing with conflicts between two peoples forced together, of racism and of refugees, of violent counter-reactionary movements on all sides, on governing and misrule, and some really solid characters to go along with it all. On the other hand, the overarching fantasy plot sort of overwhelms everything in the end, allowing the book to wrap up everything nicely without truly dealing with all of the impacts of those themes. It's still a solid book, and a solid ending for this series, but perhaps a bit of a letdown after a book 3 that was a bit more interesting in its exploration of these ideas.

--------------------------------------------------Plot Summary--------------------------------------------------
The unrest in Elsira has only grown in the wake of Queen Jasminda's attempted assassination, with extremist groups among both the Elsirans and the Lagrimari refugees getting stronger by the day. Elsira's relations with its neighbors is still tense, with a trade embargo from Raun putting the city in dire economic straits....a situation not helped by Jasminda's now freed brother being betrothed to the Raunian princess. And the situation isn't helped by the "Goddess Awoken" keeping dangerous secrets....secrets like the fact that the True Father has escaped and no doubt intends to wreak more war upon the Elsiran and Lagrimari people.

In all this, King Jack goes on diplomatic mission, leaving Queen Jasminda alone to deal with the unrest and to try and promote unification of the country. Kyara, the now pardoned but still haunted Poisoned Flame, will be forced by the mysterious Mooriah to truly train her nethersong and power over death - along with a newly discovered young nethersinger. And Zeli, now the servant to the Goddess Awoken, will have her faith shaken, and will depart with the Queen's other brother Varten to a foreign country in hope of knowledge that could save her people....and might find herself falling for Varten, a boy troubled by doubts about his ability to help people.

All of them will need to act to save the country from the terror that is coming from within and without. But in the end will there be a united Elsira left standing? Or just the remnants of destroyed country, torn in pieces?
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So Requiem of Silence picks up after a few cliffhanger parts to the last book in this series Cry of Metal and Bone - most notably the escape of the True Father. Still besides that major plot, which I'll get to in a bit, we have a lot of similar plot themes from the prior books also present here. So very present here is the distrust between the Elsirans and the Lagirmari refugees, which resulted in an underground extremist movement led by wealthy Elsirans in the last book, which has now been coopted by a more lower class antagonist and now in this book results in a Lagrimari counter extremist movement. That theme results in Jasminda, not used to ruling on her own, to take some very desperate measures which arguably inflame things worse - such as imprisoning that antagonist on a pretense* and installing a curfew. It also results in Jasminda attempting to create a referendum on unification versus a sort of two state solution (if you're seeing modern parallels here, you won't be alone), which doesn't go the way she expects.

*It was a big deal cliffhanger at the end of the last book that the person taking control of the pseudonymous extremist faction was this character, but oddly, this book acts as if this is common knowledge and his takeover never really matters*

And we have a lot more here than all of that as well - you have the Goddess Awoken, Oona, losing trust as people realize that the powerful person they put their hopes in is just as human as the rest of them, you have the issues with a foreign country imposing an embargo that could starve out the country, you have the question of using a child as a weapon to defend the country, and more. And of course you still do have a romance arc, although it's as small a romance arc as any in the series, as the book has so many characters it rotates between (Jasminda, the True Father, Zeli, Varten, Kyara, and more). Still Zeli is still a great character as she learns to move past her faith, to go past her own fear, and to be an inspiration to others...and to find the romance she didn't have in book 2 of this series, when she was also a point of view character....and Varten is a solid partner for her, in the boy who fears failing those who give him responsibility.

Really all of the characters are great, which is good, because this book, like its predecessor, often doesn't seem to have enough time for most of them. So Varten's arc doesn't seem as well developed as it should be, the arcs of various ancient family members just feel tacked on, and several prior point of view characters from the last book reappear but only as side characters, even though they're at the center of the action. The series has come a long way from when it was just a romantic fantasy focused upon a pair of characters, but the book isn't so much longer to contain the page length for those extra character arcs.

This is even more true with the plot, which eventually gets overwhelmed by the overarching fantasy plot - the True Father regaining a hold on power through the power of the Physicks and starting another assault on Elsira, which takes over everything else...from the conflict between the Lagrimari people and the Elsirans, from the conflict between Elsira and its neighboring country....the big threat forces them all to come together to some extent, and it just feels like a cheap easy way to resolve everything. Like there's a whole new country introduced in the middle with a different culture.....and we barely spend any time there, which all just emblemizes so much of the problem with this book - there's too much in this world, and Penelope wraps it up in a really easy uninteresting way in the end.

Still again, I enjoy the characters and pairings, from Kyara to Zeli to Jasminda, and I prefer a book that tries a lot of interesting things than one that doesn't try at all, and so Requiem of Silence is still a fairly solid book that, if you enjoyed the first three books of this series, you will enjoy this one too. A solid capper in a series that improved far beyond its original scope.

The last book in the Earthsinger series.

Book 1 will always be my favorite, but this last one is a close second, as we follow more people. I did not refresh my memory of the last three books and had some trouble at the beginning of “who’s that again??”, so if you have time to read books 1 through 3, do it!

As others have said, it was a bit chaotic at times, but that’s also due to me not having the other books fresh in my mind, so there were a few confusing moments for me, but I still enjoyed this conclusion to this 4 book series.

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martins Press for this advanced eBook readers copy in exchange for an honest review.

Queen Jasminda is trying to integrate the Langrimari refugees into Elsira, but there is much unrest. It doesn't help that the True Father is still trying to attack, using shadows that can't be harmed by anything but Nethersong. Kyara isn't the only Nethersinger, but they're woefully unprepared for the onslaught. In addition, sister novitiate Zeli is hoping to unlock a secret to repairing stolen Songs that just might remake the nations.

Requiem of Silence is the fourth book in the Earthsinger Chronicles and does absolutely rely on you reading the prior ones. Elsira is troubled by politics and racial divides, which affects Jasminda on a personal level. Her brothers, who look Elsiran, are welcomed more but still feel the disconnect that comes from being biracial and not feeling a part of either culture. Jasminda isn't really getting help from Oola and is overwhelmed by the politics in the country.

I feel bad for Kyara, who had endured so much trauma and has so much distrust for those who manipulate her into training. She receives a lot of information about a past she can't remember, as well as how to manipulate her Song. At the same time, Zeli is able to travel and find new information not because she's a fabulous scholar, but because she's kind and has good intentions to save the different kingdoms. There is a lot of political concern within and around Elsira, and the appearance of wraiths intent on destroying the people ups the ante for everyone involved.

As the final volume of the Earthsinger Chronicles, it did tie up storylines and show what their futures will be even if it doesn't happen on the page per se. I would've been happy to read dozens of more books in this series, as there is rebuilding to do and future generations to care for. As it is, this is a wonderful and complete series of books, and a great one to recommend for others.

I would highly recommend you read these books back to back! It picks up right where the last book left off so if the series is already foggy. Pause. Do a reread. Then follow up with the finale. I wish I'd done that. I also wish I'd read the novellas too! I didn't realize there were novellas! But alas, here we are. I do recall not the biggest fan of book one, but don't give up on this series! It may be foggy for me, but I definitely remember each book being better than the last and I was so happy to see some of my faves in this finale! I can't reveal much without spoiling it, but if you love chaos, forbidden magic, futuristic settings, you will really enjoy this series and how it ends up. I definitely will be rereading this series again with the novellas so that I can enjoy this conclusion a bit more. Again, it simply isn't a book to just jump back into after it is been so long since it's very detailed - but romantic and well written!

"In the vein of K. Arsenault Rivera and V.E. Schwab comes L. Penelope's Requiem of Silence, the epic conclusion in the stunning Earthsinger Chronicles.

Civil unrest plagues the nation of Elsira as refugees from their old enemy, Lagrimar, seek new lives in their land.

Queen Jasminda is determined to push the unification forward, against growing opposition and economic strife. But the True Father is not finished with Elsira and he may not be acting alone. He has built a powerful army. An army that cannot be killed. An army that can only be stopped by Nethersong and the help of friends and foes of Elsira alike to stop it.

Former assassin Kyara will discover that she is not the only Nethersinger. She will need to join the others to harness a power that can save or end Elsira. But time is of the essence and they may not be ready by the time the True Father strikes.

Sisterhood novitiate Zeli will go to the reaches of the Living World to unlock a secret that could save the kingdoms. When armies meet in the battlefield, a new world will be forged - whether by the hands of gods or men, remains to be seen."

Epic conclusion indeed!

A climactic, heartwarming finale! While occasionally this multi-voice narrative meant we didn't spend long with previous main characters, it was worth it to be able to revisit so many favorites from past books. Overall, a deeply satisfying conclusion to this romantic fantasy quartet, highly recommended for fans of C.L. Polk and Katherine Arden.

This book picks up very shortly after the end of the previous book and throws us right back into the action. All the characters are more spread out, and it follows more of them rather than the previous set up in the series of just following a couple at a time. I think that also lent to some of the confusion on my part. I wasn't exactly sure who was supposed to be the main focus of this book.

The world is in a bit of chaos, with people unwilling to change wanting to adhere to the old ways. People are still scared and wary of magic, even though their new Queen is one of the few who can wield it. This book just felt like it had less focus compared to the rest of the series.

My love for the writing and the characters in their respective books is what kept me engaged with this book. I think if I had remembered more from the rest of the series I would have had a more enjoyable reading experience.

I had a hard time getting into this series but I pressed on in order to review this book. I had a hard time getting into the storyline and the characters however the writing was well done. Thank you Netgalley and St. Martin Press for this ARC but all opinions are my own.