I have missed my sassy Cajun, Nick and his friends.  Eight books in and boy that boy has been through a lot.  This is the last book in the Chronicles of Nick but not really as it’s lead in to a spin-off series, I guess? I’m not really sure how I feel about it.  First, the book was fun and zippy.  Just like the other books in the series, it’s no-stop from the beginning to end.  It’s fast paced that I had to slow myself down or I would have read it all in one sitting.  Nick’s son, Cyprian Malachai has come back from the future to make sure that Nick stays on the path to destroy the world.  In doing so, he frames Nick for the murders of his former friends that kicked off the whole series.  That plot line is actually a nonentity in the book itself as it’s quickly resolved but it does lead to Nick start to understand what is really going and how to stop it.  The one thing that has separated Nick from the all the Malachai’s before him is that he was loved by his mother and he has the loyalty of his friends.  Cyprian makes it clear that one of the reasons he hates Nick is that he is well liked while Cyprian is not.  This seems kinda weak to me but who am I to judge.  I’m sure we will get more in the Shadows of Fire series that will feature both Cyprian and Nick.  So how does Nick defeat his foe.  Obviously major spoilers so if you want to read more, check under the cut.

Well, Nick doesn’t defeat Cyprian, instead he takes a page out of Cyprian’s and his older self’s book by going back in time and trying to fix what happens.  He drinks the lethe milk so he forgets everything and everyone about his former life in hopes that when the future becomes the present he will be able to make Cyprian like him and avoid killing his mother and Kody and destroying the world.  That’s all in good but basically everything that happened in the last eight books, no longer exist.  Okay to at least Nick they don’t but to Caleb, Xev and Simi, they do.  They still have the memories and still work to keep him safe but for the rest of us the events of Chronicles of Nick are different.  Kenyon has invalidated her hole series. Eight books of adventures, characters and stories didn’t happen or at least in the redo history it didn’t happen in that way.  That’s frustrating.  She’s rebooted the whole series after we have already invested so much time in it.  Sure, it most likely pay off in the new series but why go through all that trouble just to start over again.  Gah.

Anyway, it’s still a good series.  I loved reading them.  I’ll be reading the spin off because Nick’s story isn’t over yet but I’m sorry that she had to start a new series at the expense of the other one.