THE LAST WISH OF BRISTOL KEATS

Bristol, Tyghan, and the rest return in the second installment of Pearson’s duology, following The Courting of Bristol Keats (2024).

Twenty-two-year-old Bristol Keats has had a hellish time lately. Her parents, as it turns out, are not dead, but that is far from a silver lining. Her father is still on the run, facing a 1,000-year-long sentence, and her mother is working with Bristol’s ex-situationship, Kormick, to help him secure Elphame’s throne. Meanwhile, Tyghan’s older brother, Cael—the rightful king of Danu—languishes in Kormick’s custody. To spring him, Bristol must outwit her own mother, make a promise she does not intend to keep, and get the prickly king—demoted to prince, now that Tyghan is on the throne—home in one piece. But when Maire accidentally shows her hand, betraying her true capabilities, Bristol realizes the hard truth: She has to get rid of the magic-sucking tick on her back if she has any hope of stopping her mother. Doing so will risk her life; the Lumessa must literally stop Bristol’s heart in order to coax the tick from beneath her skin. Removing it will also unlock Bristol’s latent shapeshifting abilities, but can she resist using them, and potentially losing herself, when desperate times call for desperate measures? This installment doesn’t suffer from the same info-dumping blunders as the last one, but perhaps swings too far in the opposite direction, as the wide cast of characters is insufficiently reintroduced in the book’s early chapters. (This won’t be a problem for readers who pick up both books in quick succession.) Additionally, although the character portraits are just as compelling this time around, and Bristol and Tyghan’s love story just as sweet and spicy, Bristol’s failure to meet any real resistance on her path to saving Elphame from Kormick may underwhelm readers looking for a more adventurous romantasy.

A loosely plotted, but nevertheless compelling, portrait of Faerieland in peril.