BOOK REVIEW: Restless Stars (Zodiac Academy 9)
After what feels like a lifetime but is in fact 2 years and 7 months I FINALLY have the closure I’ve been looking for with this series. If you spent more than 20 minutes on BookTok back in 2021 then you would’ve heard about the Zodiac Academy series – and that’s how I found myself in the position of forcing myself to read this book over the past couple of months. Are these books literary masterpieces? No. But they had solid world building and fast paced storylines with all the smutty makings of romantasy best sellers. Unfortunately the best of the series ended with book 7, and the last two books have been okay but not fantastic. This series had me in a chokehold when I started it and I read the first 7 books in approximately 5 weeks, which is why I’ve really struggled to reconcile the last two books with the rest of the series.
There are some things that I loved about this book, mainly the bits that took me back to what I fell in love with from the start. The chaos of Geraldine Grus, the love hate relationship between Orion and Seth, Seth Capella in general. Parts of this book transported me back to January 2021 when I was ravenous for this series and unable to put it down. There is a distinct humour that I associate with this series. It’s witty, it’s filled with attitude, it’s realistic and sometimes it’s just a little bit ridiculous in the case of characters like Geraldine and Washer. Unfortunately I think this book falls short of the standards set by the start of the series. Maybe it’s the fact that Susanne Valenti and Caroline Peckham knew how they wanted this series to end but they didn’t know how to get there, in some ways I feel that this series has been dragged out far too long and yet the ending seemed rushed in a way. The book wraps with a number of time jump chapters that tie up the series in a neat little bow whilst also leaving it open for a spin off or follow up book. These time jumps were actually what made the ending feel so rushed for me, and frankly they felt a little bit unnecessary in some ways. One thing I love when reading a book is an air of mystery around the fates of the characters, an opportunity for me to draw my own conclusions. I’m a big believer that you can provide a happy ending (if that’s what you want) whilst also leaving things open to interpretation. There is not a lot of room for interpretation here beyond a final sentence that seems more intentionally set up to leave the series open for a return.
Despite my gripes with this book, I actually enjoyed it a lot more than I anticipated I would after reading the Goodreads reviews. There were times where I was lost in the world that Valenti and Peckham have poured so much time into creating, there were moments where I laughed out loud or found myself giggling and kicking my feet. Personally, I’ll be giving myself a well earned break from Solaria and checking in to other fantasy worlds before reading any of the spin-offs as a bit of palate cleanser. Is this book a must read? if you’ve read the rest of the series then yes. If you haven’t, or you don’t care about sticking it out then you could probably skip it and seek out spoilers to know how the major plot driving points end. If you’re someone who wants to ONLY read the best books in a series, this isn’t the one. If you hated book 8, then book 9 will infuriate you as well. As someone who HAS read them all and is happy about it? There’s a range of reasons for that, in part it’s my incessant need to see this out to the end, but in part I’m glad I experienced it for myself and didn’t rely on other reviews to make up my mind. Also the characters really make it all worth it.
In the event that you don’t want to read the books and instead just want to know how some of the main plots end then I’ve compiled a list of FAQ’s below. These contain spoilers, so this is your warning that if you don’t want to know then stop reading now!!
who wins the war?
The twins win the war, Lionel and Lavinia are both actually dead by the end of the book
do any main characters die?
not this time! there are side character deaths but none of the core group are killed
Which couples end up together?
