DNF Review – Oathbound (The Legendborn Cycle, Book 3) by Tracy Deonn (3/5 stars)
Reading Level: Young Adult
Genre: Contemporary Fantasy/Paranormal
Length: 653 pages
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
Release Date: March 4, 2025
ASIN: B0D1R6WPPL
Stand Alone or Series: 3rd book in the Legendborn Cycle
Source: Borrowed ebook from Library
Rating: 3/5 stars
“Bree Matthews is alone. She exiled herself from the Legendborn Order, cut her ancestral connections, and turned away from the friends who can’t understand the impossible cost of her powers. This is the only way to keep herself—and those she loves—safe.
But Bree’s decision has come with a terrible price: an unbreakable bargain with the Shadow King himself, a shapeshifter who can move between humanity, the demon underworld, and the Legendborn secret society. In exchange for training to wield her unprecedented abilities, Bree has put her future in the Shadow King’s hands—and unwittingly bound herself to do his bidding as his new protégé.
Meanwhile, the other Scions must face war while their Round Table is fractured, leaderless, and missing its Kingsmage, as Selwyn has also disappeared. When Nick invokes an ancient law that requires the High Council of Regents to grant him an audience, the Order’s Merlins imprison him. No one knows what he will demand of the Regents…or what secrets he has kept hidden from the Table.
As a string of mysterious kidnappings escalates and Merlins are found dead, it becomes clear that no matter how hard Bree runs from who she is, the past will always find her.”
Series Info/Source: This is the 3rd book in the Legendborn Cycle. I borrowed this on ebook from my library.
Thoughts: Ugh, I was really struggling with this one. I got about 15% of the way in and decided to set this aside for now. I really enjoyed the first two books in this series. I was excited for the third (and what I thought was the final book) to finally be released after three years of waiting. Surprise! It’s not the final book…there will be at least one more, and who knows how many years that will take to come out.
I started reading this and thought the first part with Bree was okay. I remembered Bree, and I kind of remembered what was happening. Then we start switching POV, I had no idea who William was (oh, yeah the healer guy, I vaguely remember that) and I had no idea who Mariah was (nope still don’t remember her after a couple chapters). I realized I had another 7 hours of struggling through this on my Kindle and just couldn’t right now.
As an author, if you are going to wait three years between books, it would be awesome to have a synopsis of the previous books or an index or a list of characters or something to help your readers out. I don’t have time to go back and re-read the first two books. I was completely lost here. I also borrowed this from the library and was running out of time to read it before I needed to return it. I just didn’t have to the time to devote to figuring out what happened in the first two books and get through this one.
I might go back and pick this up again once the series is complete and I can sit down and read all the books back to back. However, for now, I am setting it aside. I have a bit of a pet peeve about author’s that take many years to write a book in a series. I appreciate that this is an art form but struggle with following an author who takes many years to write each book in a series and then ends up extending the series even more. When that starts to happen, I usually sit back and wait for the author to finish the series before I invest anymore time and effort.
My Summary (3/5): Overall I didn’t have the time and patience to struggle through this right now. I couldn’t remember half of the characters, and there aren’t many hints throughout the book. Unless you go back and re-read the previous two books in the series (or you read a lot less books and have a much better memory than me) you are going to be lost with what’s going on here. I am planning to pick this back up when the series is complete and I can sit down and re-read all the books back to back. I still feel like it wouldn’t have been that much work to provide a characters list or even a “here’s what’s happened” so far at the beginning of the book. Lots of fantasy authors do that, especially if they get stalled out on a series and take three years to get the next book out.
