Not to sound dark but if Cal and Maven both died, it would have been very poetic and the series would have made a full circle. Mare tells us in the first book that Maven and Cal are like Shadow and flame, one cannot exist without the other.

Society is cooked. Our last and only hope is a sarcastic teenage girl with unresolved trauma and a destiny she never asked for.

And if I said Mare Barrow is a beautifully written character who is not perfect, and did not deal with everything the right way, but she’s still a good person at her core and was only doing her best with the tools she was given. What then.

if i had a nickel everytime i read a romantasy book about a poor girl from the streets who got picked to participate in a trial between rich kids with superpowers, while having to live at the palace where the two brothers fell in love with her before she betrayed them and ran away, i'd have two nickels.