The Storm of Echoes by Christelle Dabos

 

**This review will contain some spoilers for the earlier books in the series**

For the past several weeks I have been making my way through Christelle Dabos' Mirror Visitor Quartet. I was finally up to the last book and I had really been enjoying everything so far, so I decided to charge full steam ahead and finish the series off. I started in on The Storm of Echoes looking for a satisfying conclusion to Ophelia and Thorn's strange and dangerous adventure, or at least a conclusion that I could somewhat understand. The plot of these books had gotten increasingly complex, and I knew that I was in for a wild ride, but I was really hoping that the story would end in a way that made sense to me.

The plot of the novel picks up soon after where the last book left off, with Ophelia and Thorn reunited, passionately in love, and ready to continue their investigations into God and The Other. They don't have any time to waste. Increasingly large chunks of arks have been falling from the sky, and it's clear that their entire world is in danger of collapsing if they don't figure out a way to stop it. Their clues point them towards the observatory of the Deviations, a medical facility shrouded in secrecy that specializes in treated "inverted" people. As Ophelia and Thorn have to keep their relationship hidden to protect their true identities, they infiltrate the observatory from different angles. Thorn enters in as a government inspector, and Ophelia admits herself as a patient.

Once inside, Ophelia is subjected to all sorts of strange and scary medical experiments that push her to her limits and help her recover some memories. The process helps her piece together some important information, and slowly, the mysteries of God, the Other, and the ancestral spirits become more clear. Merely figuring things out isn't enough to stop the imminent destruction of the world though. Ophelia and Thorn must work together to take what they know and use it to turn everything back to the way it should be.

I did enjoy The Storm of Echoes, but it ended up being my least favorite of the series. I still was amazed by the creativity and world building that Dabos included and I continued liking Ophelia and Thorn as characters. Reading this series is such a vivid, rich experience that the sheer amount of imagination employed throughout its pages makes up for a lot. There were definitely some aspects of the story that disappointed me though, the biggest of which was exactly the thing I was worried about - it was very confusing.

The last quarter of the novel contained a lot of information that was meant to answer all the questions the series posed. This information, however, was very difficult to understand. Things became so cerebral, metaphorical, and complex that most of it didn't make sense to me. The way the world in this story operates follows a very complicated system of rules. Mirrors, echoes, reflections, codes, black holes, alternate universes, and magic all interact with each other in ways that are not predictable or logical. At no point throughout the conclusion could I tell what was happening or what might happen next, and not in a good way. I think if I read the series again (and a few more times after that), I could make better sense of it, but I don't like having to do that. I like complexity in a series, but this was a lot, and I think it would have benefited the story as a whole if some of these plot elements were toned down a little.

Aside from the confusion, I was also a bit disappointed with the choice to spend most of the story in the observatory. I would have liked to see some of the characters we got close to in books one and two more. Most of them were there, but only very briefly, and I got the feeling that they were only included at all out of a sense of obligation. Thorn falls in this category as well--he's there, but only in a few chapters, and I wished for more of him. The characterization in this novel has consistently been one of its strongest points, and it felt like a waste to push so many great characters aside. There's also a big twist in the story that comes too late and concerns a minor character that I didn't really care about or remember that well, so it didn't hit as hard as it should have. 

The ending of the story was very bittersweet. It was well written, but I wanted it to be different. I'm not sure how I feel about it.

So while I thought this was still a very good fantasy novel, these issues held it back from being a truly great conclusion to the series. It was definitely memorable in the sense that it was extremely unique and imaginative, but the complexity was too much at the end. I just finished reading it, and if you asked me to explain the plot right now, I couldn't do it clearly. That's not ideal. However, despite these issues, I am still very glad I experienced the whole quartet of novels for the sheer creativity of them alone. I'll definitely be hanging onto these books and possibly revisiting them in the future. There is certainly room for other stories to be told in this universe. I'm curious to see if Dabos will ever bring us back there again.

Challenge Tally

Finally in 2022 - Series Edition: 17/28

Total Books Read in 2022: 42