Book Review #627 - Balthazar (Evernight #5) by Claudia Gray

My Rating: 3/5


Source: Bought


Goodreads











For hundreds of years, the vampire Balthazar has been alone-without allies, without love.

When Balthazar agrees to help Skye Tierney, a human girl who once attended Evernight Academy, he has no idea how dangerous it will be. Skye's newfound psychic powers have caught the attention of Redgrave, the cruel, seductive master vampire responsible for murdering Balthazar and his family four centuries ago. Now Redgrave plans to use Skye's powers for his own evil purposes.

Balthazar will do whatever it takes to stop Redgrave and exact his long-awaited revenge against his killer. As Skye and Balthazar stand together to fight him, they grow closer-first unwillingly, then undeniably. Balthazar realizes his lonely world could finally be changed by her. . . .  

This is the fifth and final book in the Evernight series and is the sequel to Evernight, Stargazer, Hourglass and Afterlife.

As I didn't particularly like Afterlife, I was a little hesitant to read this book as I thought that I may have become tired of this series (as I did read them all back to back).

However, I found the change in narration refreshing. Balthazar is a character that I have felt was underused throughout the series so I loved that he was one of the narrators in this book - it showed a completely different side to him plus more detail of his history.

The series has shown before what life is like for a vampire to fight what they are, but what is different in Balthazar's case is that he has been doing that for centuries.

The other narrator was Skye who was introduced in one of the previous books. I didn't really care for her before but as a narrator she was also really refreshing as I didn't find her as annoying or whiny as Bianca.

I found the whole idea of Skye's blood being able to make vampire relive their memories of human life really intriguing, but once again I felt like this really interesting idea got shoved to the background to make way for the romance, and in the case of this book - the angst.

Skye likes Balthazar, Balthazar likes Skye - but Balthazar is reluctant to break his century long rule of never getting involved with humans. I just felt like this whole concept has been done countless times in YA literature and it just overall came across as immature.

I loved that Charity was back as she is one of my favourite characters. Her relationship with her brother Balthazar is more deeply explored and her hatred of him is validated.

The ending was wrapped up nicely and leaves the door open for potential sequels.