In a world where a wannabe emperor is actually kind of succeeding at his job of conquering the world, Ki finds herself awakened by hands around her neck, her belongings stolen, and not a clue as to who she is. What does she do? Fight back of course, which only gets her into deeper trouble with the village she has stumbled upon in an effort to get her belongings back.
“The Last One” by Rachel Howzell Hall was a story to say the least; and not necessarily a good one. All of the twists and turns of this story only served to make an absolute rat’s nest of the yarn ball that is my brain.
To start off, the pacing was way too fast. By the second chapter, the two main characters were ready to “get it on,” and by the next chapter they were on an adventure to find the lost memories of Ki. This entire book was just an info dump that left my head spinning.
Next, the author’s writing style changes a grand total of five times throughout the book. Not only are readers reeling from the information being poured into their brain like a waterfall, but now readers also must use their brainpower to comprehend a completely different writing style than what was on the page before.
Not to mention the characters’ personalities. Everyone was bipolar, and no, I am not exaggerating. In the span of a paragraph, one character goes from hating Ki’s guts, to being all “buddy-buddy” with her, to accusing her. The mental whiplash that I got from reading this book was insane.
That being said, the main character was super two dimensional. She was the typical romantasy main character with a tragic backstory (that she very conveniently has no recollection of) and an “oh, woe is me” personality, with a sprinkle of “why does everyone hate me.”
Speaking of the main character forgetting her entire origin story, she forgets it so much that she forgets she forgot everything about halfway through the story. Honestly, I kept reading at this point just hoping it would get better. Spoiler alert: It did not.
The only truly good thing about this story would have to be the only real plot twist. Not that I’m going to spoil that for readers. If I had to put in the mind mutilating work to get there, everyone else does too. This is definitely one of those books where readers must do so much more than just judge a book by its cover and synopsis.
That being said, the cover did kind of make me mad by the end of the book. Specifically, the part underneath the dust cover. It had nothing to do with the story itself. The moth on the main cover was good though.
Reading this book took my last possible brain cell to read it. Readers may be asking, “Well, why didn’t you stop reading it?” Because I got far enough into the book that it would have felt like more of a waste of my time to leave a book unfinished than it would to read the entirety of a book I did not like. And the hope was there that it would get better. I give this book a 1.5/5 for the only good part of it being the plot twist.