This book HURT SO BAD. If you're not interested in spoilers, beware this review because it will be spoiler heavy.

But before you click the exit or back button, here's my non-spoiler review:

I love Rachel Vincent and her writing is utterly addicting. She knows how to craft characters who make you feel for them, she creates fantastical environments that somehow feel real and make the story move fast but still hit the point home. If I had to give a rating based off her writing abilities, it would be a 5.

Unfortunately, I did not like how this book ended the trilogy. Without giving away spoilers, the ending made this book a solid 2 for me. With that being said, I'll let it meet in the middle (ish...) with a solid 3.

P.S. Don't read this book if you haven't read the first two. It probably won't make much sense. The first two books are absolutely marvelous though, so go read them. Rachel has always been one of my fave authors and I'll support her over and over.

NOW FOR SPOILERS: BEWARE.


Oh. Man.

This book absolutely killed my soul. It took me a long time to get to writing this review because I am absolutely heart broken. Rachel crafted this beautiful story over Mengarie and Spectacle and ended it like THIS?! How could she do this to me?! It's like a personal insult!

To those who made it past the spoiler warning, our lead Delilah (I still love that name...) is pregnant with Gallagher's baby. The two actually start to have romantic feelings for each other and their romantic relationship starts to bloom. BUT THAT'S IT BECAUSE RACHEL KILLS DELILAH OFF.

Why can't heroines have a happy ending? This book reminded me SO MUCH of Allegiant by Veronica Roth and I absolutely LOATHED and HATED that book. Let the woman have her family and win the fight. All of these books where the woman sacrifices herself and dies makes my so angry. Most books the men sacrifice everything and still win in the end, but with women they always seems to die. Maybe it's just my book and film choices, but I don't see many pieces of work where the women win. *Personal Rant Over*

The Delilah/Gallagher relationship made me swoon and I couldn't wait to see them get their HEA, but alas no. A lot of readers did not want this relationship to happen (some of my close friends were not impressed) but Rachel had to subvert expectations and make this strong friendship a romantic one. For, 1 bonus for Rachel to fit my romantic book goals.

So, they have their beautiful little baby and stay hidden. Friends die, all seems to be lost and then... all is lost. This whole book felt like it had been rushed together due to a publishing company complaining at Rachel. Lots of time was spent hiding, talking and complaining about birth and pregnancies. Lost friends were never found, even though Delilah promised to get them back. All of these promises and plot holes just left... there. As giant plot holes.

This whole series reflects a lot of modern political comments. It reminds me of Handsmaid Tale in some manners because it does talk a lot about society. BUT... society hurts and this book HAD to follow through with that? Give me some hope for us girls! Pleeeeease.

Now, now. I am raging all over my negatives because this book hurt but it was still very good (in other aspects).

1. The swapping babies plot line was hella cool and really interesting. I was actually really interested in this and found it truly intriguing.

2. All of those swapped babies and deaths was crazy, but it never really... did much? Like, it was there but wasn't expanded on. I WANT MORE GOSH DARNIT.

3. Gallagher is sexy as heck and I need a man like that. Whatever, judge me all you want.

I really hope Rachel does some side stories. Does everyone get reunited? What happens to Gallagher and the girl? In my wildest dreams Rachel rewrites this book with a happy ending but I'm not gonna get that.

I'll still read books by Rachel. I'm not on a book ban or anything, but I am extremely hurt and I'll need Rachel to make some beautiful HEA to win me back. I'm sure she'll do it. Right? ;)

While this book crashed and burned for me, it's still a great read. Lots of readers will love the surprise ending for sure!


Three out of five stars. ( )

The series that started with a roar goes out with a weak, acquiescent whimper.

(Full disclosure: I received a free e-ARC for review through NetGalley. Trigger warning for violence, including rape and forced abortion, pregnancy, and birth. This review contains clearly marked spoilers.)

“I cry foul. Humankind doesn’t deserve a sword and shield. Or even a plastic spork. Not after everything they’ve done to us. You should be fighting for us.”

If Menagerie - the first book in this trilogy - was a 2020 Democratic Presidential hopeful, it would be Bernie Sanders. Fury, on the other hand? More of a Joe Biden. Pete Buttigieg, at best.

Look. I absolutely loved, cherished, and adored Menagerie. Reading it was a rapturous moment for me, and for reasons that something like 97% of my fellow readers just won't get. While the plight of the cryptids in this parallel universe created by Rachel Vincent has several obvious and unmistakable corollaries in our world - the treatment of Muslims in post-9/11 America, the demonization of brown immigrants, especially (but not exclusively!) under a Drumpf presidency - at the time I argued that the most obvious one was also the most apt: simply put, "Menagerie reads like a thinly veiled animal rights revenge fantasy." Was that Vincent's intention? Probably not, especially given how the later books played out. Like Oreos, Menagerie was accidentally vegan. But that doesn't make it any less delicious.

My main gripe with its follow-up, Spectacle, wasn't that Vincent walked back the animal-friendly undertones, but rather that she failed to tread any new ground. By swapping the site of Delilah's enslavement and oppression from Metzger’s Menagerie (a struggling traveling circus) to the Savage Spectacle (a place where cryptids are rented out for basically anything, from canned hunts to rape), it seemed like she meant to up the stakes:

***

Establishments like the Savage Spectacle were whispered about in hushed, fearful tones from behind the bars of Metzger’s Menagerie. They were the boogie men that Metzger used to keep his captives in line: act up, and you’ll end up at a place even worse than here. But is it? Really?

While rape in the form of sexual trafficking is rampant at the Spectacle, rape also occurred at Metzger’s: he forced “exhibits” to breed so that he could sell their offspring. Instead of forced abortion, as at Spectacle, Metzger’s had forced pregnancy and birth. Captives were not intentionally murdered at the carnival, but they were neglected and sometimes shipped off to places where they would be killed, such as research institutions or game preserves.

Is it really possible to rank oppressions?

I feel like Spectacle is Vincent’s attempt to up the ante, to create a world more shocking and appalling than even Metzger’s. And I don’t think that’s possible, because again: how do you compare atrocities? It’s all terrible and horrifying and makes anyone with an ounce of humanity not want to live on this planet anymore.

***

Fury, on the other hand, represents a serious (and seriously disappointing) deviation from the much more radical and subversive Menagerie. Also, very little happens. Something like 75% of the book involves the main characters hiding out in a remote cabin, or sitting in their cars drinking slushees for the free incognito wifi. I shit you not.

Fury picks up nine months after Delilah & Co.'s escape from the Savage Spectacle. After they disabled Vandekamp's ability-inhibiting shock collars and high-tailed it out of there, the government bombed the facility. The unlucky cryptids and abusive guards trapped inside were written off as collateral damage. On the upside, they have no idea how many cryptids survived - and escaped. They do suspect that Delilah and Gallagher are out there, BUT they remain blissfully unaware of Delilah's pregnancy. Which is pushing ten months and might end with her demise at the chubby little hands of a fear dearg baby.

Delilah, Gallagher, Lenore, Zyanya, Claudio, Genni, Rommily, and Eryx are all hiding out in an off-grid cabin in the deep woods outside of DC. Lenore sirens people into giving them cash monies to survive, and she and Delilah - the most human-looking of the group - go into town once a week to check the news feeds. They mean to be searching for the missing members of their group - Lenore's husband, Rommily's sisters, Zyanya's brother and children - but it's hard to get anything done when you're a notorious fugitive.

And then a spate of mass murders whips everyone into a frenzy. Teachers kill students, nurses kill patients, police kill civilians, soldiers kill everything that moves. Some begin to fear that this is the beginning of a second reaping. Cryptids are scapegoated all over again. Though it seems that things can't get worse for nonhumans, the bottom drops even lower: checkpoints are set up, with orders to shoot loose cryptids on sight.

And then things really go off the rails when Delilah wakes up one morning covered in blood and grime. It seems she killed someone in her sleep; but with two badasses taking up space in her body - the furiae and her fetus - it's anyone's guess who the murderer is...or why the victims' faces all look eerily similar in death. One thing we do know: she can't stop won't stop.

All this plays out against the backdrop of the first Reaping in 1986, as told from the POV of fourteen-year-old Rebecca Essig, one of the few kids who was lucky enough to survive the mass slaughter by virtue of having other plans that night. She was at a slumber party, only to skip out early and find two of her three younger siblings dead, and her parents covered in blood. Eventually, the government would take her six-year-old sister Erica - really a changeling, or surrogate - into custody, never to be seen again. Rebecca's story centers on her search for the real Erica, and converges with Delilah's in unexpected (and often confusing) ways.

*** So here is where the book goes terribly wrong (and where the SPOILERS start). ***

It turns out that, of the hundreds of thousands of surrogates that the government rounded up in 1986, five or six thousand survived. They have been kept in a Guantanamo-like facility, under the control of Vandekamp's collars, presumably for research and interrogation. However, when Delilah and her friends disabled the collars, they disabled the whole lot of them, allowing the surrogates to escape.

Now in their mid-thirties, the surrogates aim to kickstart a second Reaping, this time by turning authority figures against the very people they should be protecting and serving. Hence: teachers vs. students, nurses vs. patients, cops and soldiers vs. civilians. I think - hope! - you can see where I'm going with this.

This plot like leads to some pretty cringe-worthy exchanges between the MCs. To wit:

“Authority figures.” My voice hardly carried any sound. “Instead of parents. The surrogates could be using authority figures this time. Anyone we’re supposed to be able to trust to protect us.”

“And now—maybe—they’ve found a new way to get to us,” Lenore said. “To make us suspicious of the people we should trust the most.”

and:

"They’ll keep feasting on our pain and chaos for as long as possible. They’ll keep turning teacher against student, nurse against patient, soldier against civilian. Stealing trust and security from us. Making us fear the very people who should protect us.”

Soldiers and cops, really? "People we should trust the most"? You can tell that a white person wrote this, the privilege is blinding. And in a story that's ostensibly about the othering and oppression of marginalized communities, to boot. Like, I'm a middle-class white lady and even I get nervous around people with guns who can use them with near impunity. Crazy, that.

Put another way: anyone who's paying even the slightest bit attention is already suspicious of militarized authority figures like soldiers and the police.

The ending, though? OMG, the ending. I can't even with this appeasing centrist bullshit.

Because Delilah is tangentially responsible for the escape of the surrogates, the furiae has taken it upon herself to send out a sort of homing signal, luring all the escapees to Delilah's doorstep. Once they meet, the furiae assumes control of Delilah's body and straight-up slays them; there is no self-inflicted poetic justice here. (Hence the sleep-killing.) But killing them one at a time is a slow process, so Delilah hatches a plan to get thousands of them in one place and induce mass slaughter - with a human audience, so that they can see that we're all on the same team. Gross, vomit, no want.

"I cry foul. Humankind doesn’t deserve a sword and shield. Or even a plastic spork. Not after everything they’ve done to us. You should be fighting for us.”

“Lenore, I’m not choosing humankind over cryptids. This isn’t us versus them. The surrogates are the enemy. And the only way humankind will ever understand that is if we show them that the rest of us are all on the same side.”

Uh, but you're not. And this won't work. Let me tell you why.

In the wake of 9/11, many Muslims denounced the actions of the hijackers; 6,024 self-identified American Muslims fought in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, fourteen of whom were killed overseas. Yet none of this has stopped countless right-wing politicians and commentators from condemning, vilifying, and marginalizing all 1.8 billion Muslims in the world because of the actions of a few. (Meanwhile, domestic terrorism largely remains the purview of white men, and yet you rarely hear calls for white men everywhere to disavow John Timothy Earnest or James Alex Fields Jr., lest they be guilty by association.)

Immigrants have a lower incarceration rate than natural-born citizens, yet the facts don't stop 45 from saying things like "When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best. They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people." Hell, some immigrants even put their bodies on the line by serving in the military, only to be deported once they return home. "Same team" my ass.

I could go on but this is depressing.

Bigotry is born of fear, sure; and this fear is often misplaced. But this assumes that people are open to education and growth, and often it's just the opposite (deplorables in the house!). Bigotry is stubborn and entrenched, y'all. Sometimes people are just fucking horrible. Also consider that oppression is profitable. We're not afraid of most nonhuman animals, yet we continue to exploit them; and, in this AU, cryptids are a big busine$$. Circuses and carnivals, research facilities, controlled hunts, unpaid labor, rape and forced birth, exotic meats, the military-industrial complex. Political capital and mobilizing the base. Humans have so very much to gain by keeping this system of dehumanization and oppression going.

Delilah's sacrifice, the denouement of this story, is more tragic than noble. Menagerie had me hoping for total animal liberation: nothing more, nothing less. What we got was some half-assed, "hearts and minds," if we cut off a limb for them, maybe they will deign to acknowledge the basic humanity in us, bullshit.

As far as I'm concerned, her story begins and ends with Menagerie. Spectacle is just kind of meh, while Fury is legit a slap in the face to everyone who rooted for Delilah and her adopted family of cryptids (and, by extension, the marginalized populations they represent in our own world).

Additional quibbles:

Gallagher's only method of communication seems to be growling.

I do not like that he and Delilah hooked up; it feels like a really gross and icky taboo violation, and besides, can't men and women ever "just" be friends (or champion and cause, as it were)?

Finally, Eryx. Oh, poor sweet Eryx. You and Rommily deserved so much better. We all did.

/rant

http://www.easyvegan.info/2020/01/11/fury-by-rachel-vincent/ ( )

This book left me speechless. A lot of things happened and not all of them made me happy. I feel in love with this series shortly after the release of Menagerie and have eagerly awaited each new installment. In case you are wondering, this is the third and final book in the Menagerie trilogy which really does need to be read in order. To say that I couldn't wait to get my hands on this book would be an understatement because I just had to know what happens to Delilah, Gallagher, and the rest of the group.

This book is set up a little differently than the previous books in the trilogy. There are two timelines throughout the book where previous books had only brief glimpses into the past. This book focuses on the present day with Delilah and company but also goes back to 1986 as The Reaping began. I found the parts of the book set in the past to be interesting but I was a bit confused why the focus wasn't more on the present day. As I continued to read, things started to come together and I began to see the larger picture but the shift was a bit surprising.

As I have come to expect from this series, this book has its share of heartbreak. More than its share if I am being honest. The world that Delilah and her friends are living in is cruel and unjust. They must live in constant fear of discovery and simple tasks are quite risky. The group wants to reunite with others that they were separated from during their escape but every move could jeopardize their own freedom.

Delilah's pregnancy is a major focus of this story. Her pregnancy lasts a bit longer than a human pregnancy which is no surprise since the father, Gallagher, is a red cap. Neither Gallagher or Delilah made the choice to become parents but they are both committed to doing what is best for the child. It does put a strain on their relationship as they try to figure out how to move forward and what their roles will be.

I do have to say that I did struggle with the rating for this book a bit. I have been back and forth trying to decide if it is a 3 star read or a 4 star read. Some things happened in the book that I didn't like but I think it is a story well told. After some careful thought, I do think that the book deserves 4 stars. I was quite impressed by the complexity of the 1986 timeline and how everything ended up coming together. I still am not completely sold on the ending and would have liked to see just a bit more than we were given but I can deal with it as written.

I do highly recommend this trilogy to others. It is a really captivating tale of a world where cryptids must fear humans. I have already read some of the early books in the trilogy more than once and plan to re-read the trilogy again in the future which is rather high praise. I can't wait to read more from Rachel Vincent.

I received a digital review copy of this book from Harlequin - MIRA via Edelweiss and NetGalley. ( )

I got a copy of this book from Edelweiss to review. This is the third and final book in the Menagerie series by Vincent. I enjoyed it a lot. The story moves quickly and this was an easy read for me.

Delilah is anticipating the arrival of her new child and is in hiding with the other cryptids that escaped captivity in the last book. She is trying to help her friends tie up loose ends when another mystery rears its ugly head. For some reason she is being drawn to men who all look the same and for some reason her fury-side wants to brutally murder these men. Delilah is hoping that solving this mystery will help her to unravel the secrets of her past.

This story bounces back and forth between two different stories. One story is current day with Delilah. The other story is set in the 1980’s and follows a character named Rebecca who survives the Reaping that leaves the rest of her family dead and/or imprisoned. The two storylines end up converging in an interesting and unexpected way.

This story was impossible for me to put down. I was drawn to both stories (current day and 1980’s period one) and absolutely dying to know what would happen next. The ending was very emotional and left me reeling….I am still not sure how I felt about it.

Overall this was a wonderful series as a whole and I enjoyed this conclusion to it alot. I would recommend if you like gritty urban fantasy reads that have intriguing characters and lots of interesting mythological monsters. I am glad I read the series and would recommend. ( )