WHEN VILLAINS RISE

Villains rise and shine in this final entry in the Market of Monsters trilogy

After the events of Only Ashes Remain (2019), Nita and Kovit have finally captured Fabricio, the boy who betrayed Nita and whose father runs the infamous Tácunan Law, the company that protects monsters from jail. Bringing the company down—along with those who run the corrupt International Non-Human Police—becomes Nita’s mission, in addition to avenging her father’s death. But time runs out when proof of Kovit’s identity as a monstrous, torturing unnatural is made public. With both their lives in danger, power-hungry Nita will stop at nothing to save herself and Kovit. Throughout the series both Kovit and Nita have engaged in extreme, violent behavior that affirmed their monstrosity as well as their broken humanity while engaging with questions such as whether they were driven to it by their very nature, by the way society deals with those whom they consider to be monsters, or the way their own families and friends failed them. Although the novel never crosses a line into sugarcoating their inexcusable choices, it does show sympathy for its devils as it sails into a grand finale full of twists and turns. Nita’s father is Chilean and her mother is nonhuman while Kovit is Thai; both are coded as asexual.

A dark, compelling ending to an uncomfortable, morally gray series.