Effigies #3

This is the third book in the series.  While I promise not to spoil anything in this book, I may unintentionally spoil plots of the first two.   If you wish to read my reviews of the first two books you can go here and here.

Legacy of Light by Sarah Raughley

Publication Date: December 4, 2018

Summary from Netgalley:

The Effigies must uncover the connection between Saul, Blackwell, and the Phantoms before it’s too late in this epic conclusion to the Effigies trilogy. 

The world is in chaos.

After Saul’s strike on Oslo—one seemingly led by Maia herself—the Effigies’ reputation is in shambles. Now they’re being hunted by nations across the globe, grouped in with the very terrorists they’ve been trying to stop.

With Maia’s resurrected twin, June, carrying out vicious attacks across the world, everyone believes Maia is a killer. Belle has gone rogue, Chae Rin and Lake have disappeared, and the Sect is being dismantled and replaced by a terrifying new world order helmed by Blackwell. As for Saul, his ultimate plan still remains a mystery.

And Maia? No one has seen or heard from her in weeks.

It’s all somehow connected—Saul, Phantoms, the Effigies, everything. But if the Effigies can’t put the pieces together soon, there may not be much left of the world they’ve fought so desperately to save.

ARC provided by Simon and Schuster Children’s Publishing via NetGalley for an honest review. 

I have really enjoyed this series.  The world that the author envisioned is just so interesting and so like our own and yet different.  The ending was also perfect and pretty much what I wanted.  I was a little worried that it was going to end with everything being wiped clean, but it wasn’t.  This world has a long way to go to heal itself, which felt authentic to me. 

Maia continues to be our only narrator,  and she goes through a lot in this book.  All of the issues I had with her in the last book have disappeared.  She still has many doubts about what she is doing, and that is ok.  Their are many people doing deals and double crossing each other, that you really can’t tell who are the bad guys here.  There were a few moments when I worried about Maia going down the wrong path.  But she keeps her head and her sanity and comes out on top at the end.  Her relationship with her twin sister, June,  is explored in the book, which was interesting and really gave you more insight into Maia.  

All of the other Effigies are still around and still fighting, although Belle does go down the dark path.  The other two, Chae Rin and Lake, really get their acts together in this book and come to help Maia and support her in so many ways.  I like the Effigies powers being elemental and always being girls.  The whole back story of how they came to be is explained in this story and I found it to be fascinating.  The Phantoms origins are explained in more detail and I found then even more terrifying after learning it.  

The plot of this book is very convoluted and at times a little hard to follow.  There is a lot of double crossing and conspiracies and it is very hard to keep up with who the bad guys are and who is just pretending or feel like they don’t have a choice or is being controlled.  The pacing does get a little bogged down by this, but it is still a riveting read.  I especially liked the mix of a little mythology into the story.  Every question I had about the Effigies and the Phantoms was pretty much answered by the end of this book, which was great.  I hate it when I still have questions at the end of a series.  

Overall this was a fabulous series that had a very different take on the superhero plot and origins.  Even if you are not into superheroes I think you might enjoy this series, it is very well done and well written.