At the end of Fractured, everything seemed to have gone a bit wrong for poor old Lela and her companions. The mazikin had broken through to the mortal realm and were busy terrorizing everyone; people were killed, Malachi was possessed and it was just a big old mess. I got to the last page and had one of those ‘Nooooo!’ moments, so I was really excited to read Chaos.
Unfortunately, Chaos just seemed to fall a bit flat for me. Looking at some other reviews, I get the impression that this is a bit of a minority opinion, but the storyline just didn’t draw me in like the other two books did and I found it hard to keep my concentration. The action scenes, of which there are plenty, felt a bit jumbled. It was also quite a long book and I thought that by cutting it down a bit it would have sharpened the plot up and increased the tension.
There were still aspects which I enjoyed: Lela is an awesome MC, really gung-ho and not one of these little ‘Save me, save me’ girls who rely on the boys to do all the fighting. I also liked the way you never really knew who was a friend and who was an enemy - it gave the plot a nicely nightmarish quality. And I was glad Lela and Malachi got their happy ending!
Possibly I’ll go back to the Guards of the Shadowlands series at some point in the future - Sanctum and Fractured have a lot of re-read potential - and hopefully Chaos will work better second time round.
6/10