Wings by Elizabeth Richards

Wings by Elizabeth Richards 

Release Date - June 12, 2014

Publisher Website - Penguin/Razorbill
Publisher Social Media - Twitter
Pages - 400 pages
My Rating - 4/5
**received in exchange for an honest review from the publisher**

Here is the Goodreads synopsis

Following the cliffhanger ending of Phoenix, Natalie finds herself separated from Ash and unexpectedly reunited with her parents, including the father she thought was dead. But she can only think of Ash. She hasn't heard a word of him since she and Elijah were brought to the underground headquarters of the Sentry Rebellion. But she vows to find him.

Ash, meanwhile is back in Black City; it's the perfect place to hide from the Sentry government. But not for long. He won't give up on Natalie or bringing an end to the terrible reign of Purian Rose.

A pulse-racing end to an exciting series.

Stakes within a series tend to escalate as the series comes to a close. The ending novel of a series basically feels like all bets are off. The fate of the characters, and sometimes they world they inhabit, will be definitively decided. Wings felt like a ticking clock counting down as Natalie, Ash, and the rebellion race towards the final confrontation with Purian Rose. 

The sexy, sensual vibe of the previous installments is lessened for the finale. The focus is on backstory, plot line pay offs, and increased action. This 'war' that has been building reaches it's climax and there are quite a few casualties. The death toll in this series has always been rather high, but Elizabeth Richards sends her series off with a bang. 

The world building is always one of my favourite elements of this series. The stark, ash filled Black City, and the contrasting lavish Centrum all have come to life because of Elizabeth Richards' brilliant descriptions. It's vibrancy still astounds me even after three books.

The inclusion of the backstory of a young man named Edmund confused me at first. I wasn't sure how his story was going to fit into the larger picture this series has been painting. The answers garnered from these 'flashbacks' were the payoff of the entire story. It answered questions I was desperate to know the answers to. It was what I had been waiting three books for, and it didn't disappoint. It showed a different side to the world our beloved characters live in. Edmund's story becomes vital to understanding how the world we first encounter in Black City came to be, and where the story is headed.

Character progression (in this installment at least)  is placed on the back burner, except for one intriguing exception. Purian Rose is a character that I thought I had figured out. I thought he was a menacing tyrant that was meant to be underdeveloped to show how irrational his behaviour was. Wings provided some unexpected depth to this character, and his motivations. There may not be any warm feelings towards him, but there is a surprising element to his character that fleshed out the story in an honest, organic way. The villain goes from simplistic, to much more complicated in the span of one book.

Elizabeth Richards has tied everything together by the end of this novel. The answers to those questions you have? Odds are she's answered them. The origin of the Sentry, the devastating beginnings of the Darkling segregation, and everything in between. Each puzzle piece fits into a larger story until everything clicks together and the bigger picture is finally revealed. It's been laid out from book one, and this novel offers the pay off that fans of the series have been waiting for.

Wings is satisfying conclusion to the Black City trilogy. As the dust settles on this paranormal/dystopian mix, the author showed that rebellion comes at a cost, and that sometimes the characters you least expect hide the most compelling secrets.