Thank you NetGalley.com for the ARC!!!

Mixed feelings on this one. Of course I read it eagerly - loved the book and seeing more of this world. But I didn't really like Elloren in this book. She had been through so much...and rebelled against societal norms in previous books. However, in this one, she was...well a whiny wimp. Ironically, I enjoyed the added development of other characters, in particular Tierney and Lukas.

And of course, The Shadow Wand ended with a total cliff-hanger. I NEED to know what happens next!!!!! Hopefully it won't be another year.

ARC from Netgalley. Thank you. I really liked this book! I felt it was a good flow from book 3. There are definite surprises in this book that I was not expecting. I agree with others that there are a lot of new characters but I felt that they had places in the story, not just randomly thrown in. It gave some history of some of the main characters which is always nice. I liked the choices Ren made. I liked the change of scenery as well. This book did well in anticipating the questions I had as I went along. I hate having to wait to the end of a book to understand the entire story. Very much looking forward to #4!

Look, I'm just going to put out there....the 3rd installment of the Black Witch Chronicles should have been the last. I was surprised to learn it is currently being planned as a five book series to begin with, then became further convinced a five book deal was unnecessary given how little plot important content appeared in this third volume, despite it's high page count. Roughly 1/3 of the book is given over to other characters and that time is spent almost exclusively pairing them off with inevitable romantic partners (none of them, of course, actually LIKE the people they will obviously end up with, but that seems to be Laurie Forest's bread and butter). The remaining 2/3 of the book are dedicated to Elloren, a protagonist so wishy-washy and sniveling that even the trees turn against her (and, frankly, I am with the trees on this one). Elloren's "plot" in this volume is limited to returning to her homeland to finalize her marriage to her problematic fiance, and then immediately leave again (literally, the majority of the book takes place over about 3 days, with the rest of the time stuffed into a one chapter training montage that covers six weeks of unexplored time). It's an approach that is, for readers not invested in torturous romances, boring, off putting, and likely to cause more than a few readers to ask themselves "why would anyone even care about this?"

Fans of overly dramatic, turgid, purple prose for teens (I'm looking at you Twilight and Fallen fans) are likely to DELIGHT in this book, so there's absolutely a market for it. But anyone going into this series for the fantasy element will be increasingly disappointed.

Wow! Dare I say this may be my favorite of the series?! The opening pages are very slow, but after that you won’t want to put this book down. So much drama and power! As the Black Witch, Elloren isn’t safe anywhere. Vogel wants her power to destroy Erthia and the rest of Erthia can’t trust the destruction of a Black Witch. Either route leads to hunting down Elloren. Her best chance for survival is allying with Lukas Grey for training and protection. Readers will enjoy watching Elloren develop her power and confidence. The romance has picked up in this book, which some readers will be head over heels to hear if it’s with Yvan or Lukas! Either way, fans of this series will not be disappointed!