The Falconer Read Along (Chapters 30- The END)

We are delighted to welcome Daphne of Winged Reviews back to the blog for the finale of our The Falconer Read Along posts. In today’s blog post Daphne recaps Chapters 30 – the end of the The Falconer.

It’s finally here! The battle has come, the end is near, the finale of The Falconer is upon us! Shall we recap?

We were last left wondering what on earth this golden, round thing in the ground was. It’s the seal that’s keeping all the faeries trapped, but it’s been slowly losing strength and requires some reconfiguring to get it all to work again. This has to happen during the impending eclipse, a couple of days away. Aileana memorises the seal to try to make sense of it back home.

Both Kiaran and Aileana come to the conclusion that they will have to fight their way to the seal and fix it before it fails completely and Edinburgh (and the WORLD) is overrun with bloodthirsty fae. Rather heart-breaking to learn that Kiaran’s sister was the one who designed the seal and sacrificed her freedom to keep the rest of the fae trapped. She’s probably suffered through thousands of years of torture being trapped with them.

In the calm before the storm, Aileana says a lot of goodbyes. She finally owns up to Catherine about being a Falconer, and convinces her and her mother to leave the city for their safety. She tries to say goodbye to her father, who is distant and absent as always. He’s leaving town and won’t be attending her engagement party, which also happens to be the night she needs to murder all the faeries.

While building a steampunk road vehicle filled with weapons (as you do) to help their mission, Kiaran pays a visit. He gifts her with this beautiful golden armour and two blades imbued with half his power. He tells her that he plans to sacrifice himself, like his sister did, and that he wants to spend his last moments together. He goads her into fighting, and they kiss each other tearily. Kiaran explains that making a fae vow translates to “I will worship you”, which is a pretty awesome sentiment in my opinion. If I didn’t like Gavin so much I might root for these two.

Gavin catches her just as they are about to leave, dressed to the nines to attend his ill-fated engagement party. Aileana tries to convince him to go, but he’s in this now and wants to do what he can to help. He tries to tell Aileana his vision, but she stops him—if she doesn’t know, there is still a chance it won’t come to pass. She asks him and Derrick to take her ornihopter and try to warn civilians. They hug dearly and go their separate ways.

I love the final act of this book. It’s non-stop action and exciting reveals. May’s vivid fight scenes are such a delight. Aileana and Kiaran whirl through a horde of fae, led by Sorcha’s brother. Aileana goes for the seal while Kiaran holds them off. She’s trying to solve it while fighting off Sorcha’s mental assault and worrying about Kiaran. It’s an exciting end and possibly the most agonising cliffhanger ever!

Thank you for reading along with me these past 4 weeks. I hope you’ve enjoyed The Falconer as much as I have and you can find me on Twitter and Goodreads anytime to talk about The Vanishing Throne!

The Falconer is out now in paperback and eBook. The Vanishing Throne is now out in bookshops and online.

You can find out more about our guest blogger Daphne her blog and Illumicrate by visiting her website, or following her on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.