I am here today with a review of the anticipated conclusion to the Firebird trilogy, A Million Worlds With You by Claudia Gray.
I have decided that this was the year that I am going to finish off all the unfinished series I have sitting on my shelf. And since I got this book for Christmas, I decided it would be a part of my rampage.
Anyways, back to this book.
Let me start off by saying I loved this trilogy from the start. I had never read any books with parallel universes or inter-dimensional travel before and this series was a great introduction to those types of books. When the second book came out, I jumped on it - loving it even more than book one. So you can see how going into the finale, I had extremely high hopes. And maybe that was why I was a little bit disappointed.
The story starts off pretty quickly after the second book ended, and Gray did a great job of recapping the important info and events that happened in the series thus far. I really appreciated this because it had been a while since I had visited the series and was a little unsure of how things had ended off. The story got back into things and reminded me of what had happened, which I enjoyed.
Then there was more travel, more romance, and more grieving. I would say these were the three main things that moved this series.
I liked seeing what was happening in different times, where Marguerite ended up after jumping from one person to the next. I liked seeing things progress with Paul and finally getting a clear answer on what was in store with Theo. But I think there were times when it got a little tedious. For a book over 400 pages, I think there could have been a lot more development of the story and not just time travel. I guess these jumps were necessary for more info about what was happening, and I really enjoyed some of the worlds, particularly Moscowverse, but I think there were some that were thrown in just as a place to go.
Marguerite is still a great character, she is strong willed and fierce, but I found sometimes she was a bit preoccupied with her relationship with Paul and less so on, I don't know, saving the universe? The core of this book is about doing such, but I will recognize and accept that the romance is also a very integral part of the story. For some reason, though, it bothered me more in this book. Paul kept saying how unstable he was and how Marguerite should walk away, but she kept standing with him. Part of me is happy with that, I loved their relationship in the other books, but I just thought it was uncharacteristic of her. She even talks about how she knows he's not good for her, and she's scared she won't ever get the old him back, but she sticks with him. If nothing else, this really annoyed me and that annoyance took away from the story as a whole.
Part of me also feels like the major conflict was resolved way too easily. There was so much going on, I found it really hard to believe that everything turned out the way it did.
I guess in the end, I disliked this book more than I originally thought.
I don't know if that was because of the other books, I just had such high expectations, when this one came out I was hoping for so much more, it couldn't deliver.
Overall, I have no unanswered questions, but part of me is left wanting a little bit more.