Shadow Heir by Richelle Mead

Title: Shadow Heir
Author: Richelle Mead
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Series: Dark Swan #4 (Final book)

Mass Market Paperback, 390 pages
Published December 27th 2011 by Zebra

Buy the Book
|AMAZON|BOOK DEPO|

Source: Bought it for myself

|SUMMARY| 
Shaman-for-hire Eugenie Markham strives to keep the mortal realm safe from trespassing entities. But as the Thorn Land's prophecy-haunted queen, there's no refuge for her and her soon-to-be-born-children when a mysterious blight begins to devastate the Otherworld. . .

The spell-driven source of the blight isn't the only challenge to Eugenie's instincts. Fairy king Dorian is sacrificing everything to help, but Eugenie can't trust the synergy drawing them back together. The uneasy truce between her and her shape shifter ex-lover Kiyo is endangered by secrets he can't—or won't—reveal. And as a formidable force rises to also threaten the human world, Eugenie must use her own cursed fate as a weapon—and risk the ultimate sacrifice. . .

|REVIEW|

The Dark Swan series is one of my favorite series, and I was pretty sad when the author said Shadow Heir would be the final book. I’ve been putting off finishing the series for awhile because I didn’t want it to be the end end and was hesitant because so many readers were upset about how the book ended. After reading Shadow Heir, I’m one of those disappointed readers. I’ve invested time in this series, and really loved all the characters (minus the stupid fox and queen Maiwenn) and for the book to end as it did was a load of crap. 

There were multiple revelations in the last two to three chapters that had me going “WTF! Are you serious?!” It was shocking, and not the good kind. I think the way the author ended it, or why she chose the way for things to play out was because she was too busy putting the time to work in her YA/Spinoff series…and this series ended up suffering.  There wasn’t a lot of action in this book (I think Eugenie did one or two spells that it , no war or big fight) either like the previous books because Eugenie was pregnant with the twins and the book consisted mostly of her hiding till the baby came. When Eugenie did give birth, she was back in the otherworld dealing with a horrible blizzard and finding out the source of problem.   

Overall a well written book, and had the usual Mead writing style, but the storyline wasn’t exciting. The only two things that I enjoyed in the entire book was learning more about Eugenie’s minion Volusion and whenever King Dorian had page time. Volusion, man I love that guy! Readers got to see more of Volusion in this book, and learn more about his past/how he came the way that he was (heart-breaking story!). He totally rocked/Save the day when it came to the ‘’problem” Eugenie had to fix, or actually he fixed it LOL. As for Dorian, I think he’s everyone favorite character, everything he says was funny/charming. The book’s stupid shocking cliff-hanger ending really sucked…and all I can think is poor Dorian. Although Mrs. Mead said this was the last book in the series, I hope she gives this series another book. NO, this series deserves another book, a BETTER-REAL ENDING!

 

Shadow Heir was definitely not my favorite book. The majority of the book I would consider it an okay read, but it has one of the worst ending I have ever read.