Reviews by the Wicked Reads Review Team

Erica – ☆☆☆
3.5 stars

Third Wave is the conclusion in the Bones of Eden trilogy, and cannot be read as a standalone. I would strongly suggest against reading individual books or out of order.

After rating both the debut and the middle of the trilogy five stars, I feel off rating the conclusion as low as I am. It's not that I didn't enjoy it – it's that it didn't have the same infectious feeling, where I couldn't put it down. It wasn't as tight, falling into the gratuitous sex and shock-value writing category. After charging head-long into the conclusion, the story didn't need that type of filler or shock, when the bones of the story were strong enough without it.

Unlike in the previous installments, where all sexual interaction was either to propel the story or forge a bond, gratuitous scene were tucked in, throwing off the thrilling flow, along with an MM and an MMF scene. I love MM, ménage, and erotica, but after reading books one and two, these scenes in three didn't fit. Yes, in past books, there was quite a bit of sex, most of it either savage, borderline non-consensual, or dark, with an underlying feeling of connection, but it propelled the storyline forward.

Third Wave tried too hard to go out with a bang, making my head spin. The survivors tried to pick up the pieces and rebuild their way of life, in a singular village, and as one people – the Kai. Multiple times over the course of two hundred pages. They'd get half sorted out, only to be hit with another disaster. The only downtime for the reader were sex scenes, as the rest of the time, the characters were being put through their paces, either being torn apart or picking up the pieces. Over and over again. Page after page.

Unlike the previous books, where there was still a feeling of hope as the author plucked the strings of the human condition, this felt as if Bishop was doing all that could be done to test the characters, harm the characters, or outright kill the characters, all to extort specific emotions in the readers. Shock-value writing. I won't go into detail about what instruments were used to result in this, which is why I'm talking around events to remove spoilers, but it had the opposite of the intended effect on me. There was too much, to the point I stopped being emotionally invested in the characters, and no longer felt the pull of needing to know what happened next. I lost my trust in the author...

Oh, I didn't want sunshine and rainbows on the pages, and I applaud Bishop for the authenticity of knee-jerk reactions, and the results of what happened in Second Heart psychologically affecting characters during Third Wave. It was the redundancy of the two issues mentioned above that took the infectious quality away, simply because where they ended up next, I now knew they wouldn't be staying/utilizing what they built. Every step in the journey was just another stopping point in the wait for new tragedy.

The trilogy truly is dark – savage. In my review of the first installment, I dubbed the Bones of Eden trilogy as a mix of the sexual innocence of Blue Lagoon, the divided brutality of Lord of the Flies, and the dystopian feel of The Maze Runner series and its ilk.

I do highly recommend this innovated series to those who are looking for something different, sick of reading the 'same' day after day. Especially recommended to dystopian fans who wish for an injection of heart-stopping dark themes, borderline non-consensual sex, and the unexpected nature of not being able to predict where the author is taking the story next.

Yes, the trilogy ends on a high-note, with some happily ever afters, and I appreciated the last segment to give the ultimate of closures in the future. But, in the end, I'm left feeling as I did with the finale of Lost.