These Vengeful Souls by Tarun ShankerMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
I wasted no time in finishing These Vicious Masks trilogy. I had won the paperback copy of the first one but had to borrow the ebook from the library for the second and third books.
Like with the first two, I'm rather late to writing this review. To recap: I underwent the Lindamood-Bell Visualizing and Verbalizing Program to regain my reading comprehension in 2018. 2019, and continuing in to 2020, has been about finding books to practice my regained skills on.
I'm writing this review on 31 December 2020 . . . why did I wait so long? Pandemic! I began it as the pandemic news hit and then a few days into reading it, lockdown descended upon us. Uncertainty over things like groceries on top of the months-long higher levels of fatigue I continued to suffer from slowed my reading. I don't know if this affected my enjoyment of this book because again, like the second one, I didn't find it as good as the first one.
Because of the length of time, I had to reread the back cover copy, read other reviews, and to sit and have a think. Unlike the other two books, I simply cannot remember the entire ending. This might have to do with the pandemic sucking up all my cognitive power at the time of reading. But also the story didn't draw me in like book one did.
I found it began intriguingly. Then all of a sudden we're on a speeding train of danger and battles, of u-turns and hide and go seek. Evelyn's need for revenge colours everything. She's certain, and she acts without thinking. It gets tedious. Really, does she never learn? Being a teen with no thinking has to end at some point. I continued to enjoy Mr. Kent more than Sebastian. Sebastian got on my nerves with his endless brooding. Dealt a deadly hand, you'd think he could find a way to cope other than simply running away, especially after he realized he had to re-enter the fray.
Non-stop action, twists, new characters becomes exhausting after awhile. I guess that's what revenge is: exhausting. A heightened state of adrenaline that makes no room for thought or noticing others around you. The only goal: kill that man, in this case, the man named Goode. (The names were at times a moment of humour.)
Although I don't remember the ending that well, I remember the sense of it, a kind of calm satisfaction. I was glad that I finished reading the trilogy. I wished that it had been written better, less feeling of the writing being rushed, more of the humour and quirkiness of the first book.
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