We meet up with Nick Prasad seven years after the events of book two. He's had years to grieve the loss of his family, Earth, and nurse then put away his anger, living in a world parallel to his, but very different. He is venerated as a prophet, with the monarchy harvesting meanings from his dreams, and though it's a relatively comfortable life, Nick knows that at any time, the king and queen could have him killed gruesomely.

War is coming, and if that isn't bad enough, a stranger called Yenu is captured trying to steal some ancient text from the royal library. When Nick confronts the stranger, though appearing very different from Johnny Chambers, Yenu has the same focus, brilliance, and lack of concern for others if they're in the way of her goals. Nick is thrown back into the toxic mix of feelings he has had for Johnny since her secret control over him was exposed in book one. Nick has to decide whether or not to aid or stop what the stranger wants to do, which, like all of Johnny's big plans, is huge, dangerous, requires many pieces of arcane and hard to find knowledge, with the possibility of destroying this world and others.

This wrap-up has huge scope and stakes, but is also again an intimate portrait of a fractured and deeply damaged person and the relationship he has with someone who both needs and relies on him to always support her, despite her gross mishandling of many, many things. The consequences of failure of the story are massive, but the banter and sniping between Nick and Yenu keep it grounded, reminding one of the small but no less important stakes of the story, of family, friendship and responsibility to others.

The story drags a little (I think this book, and the previous installments) could have been a little shorter, with perhaps one or two fewer searches for arcana, but I never stopped caring during this story about whether Nick would be reunited with his deeply missed family (I loved his younger siblings in book one). Premee Mohamed is one of my "She wrote it, I'll read it" authors, and I'm glad I went with her on this trip to protect Earth from Lovecraftian horrors.

3.5 stars.

Thank you to Netgalley and to Rebellion Solaris for this ARC in exchange for my review.

A very satisfying conclusion to a wonderful Lovecraftian trilogy. I really enjoyed the creatures and the characters, especially Nick who was very real and well-crafted, and the supporting characters were also a joy to read. If you haven't read the first two books in the series, I highly recommend you start with those. The entire series is fantastic.

Thanks to the publisher Rebellion and to NetGalley for an advance copy in exchange for this honest review.

Premee Mohamed concludes her trilogy with an eldritch horror show that has her best writing of the trilogy. This final book jumps a number of years into the future from the end of the second book, an ending that didn’t seem to have any future to move toward. However, Mohamed manages to continue and expand the story in ways that feel logical and genuine (within the worlds of the story). Lovecraftian and eldritch horror has often been marked by entities so horrific that we fail to have language or even brain power enough to process them, and while still leaning into that enormity Mohamed doesn’t shy away from graphic imagery, with a cavalcade of beings that are part of this journey. The story is creative and engaging, and feels like it more or less resolves the central emotional conflict in the best way possible given the confines of the narrative. The story moves forward compulsively, is well-paced and always pushes the reader to turn one more page, or look around one more corner. The writing itself is, as I mentioned, the best of the trilogy, and it was fun and easy to read.

This is a great conclusion to a wonderful story that combines sci-fi and eldritch horror in exciting and terrifying ways.

I want to thank NetGalley and Rebellion, Solaris Publishing who provided a complimentary eARC in exchange for an honest review.

A worthy successor to the rest of the series. Magical world building and memorable characters made this an unforgettable read. I'll definitely be on the lookout for more from this author in the future.

Great final part in this excellent trilogy. It was a fascinating and well written story that kept me reading.
Great world building and storytelling.
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine

SORRY FOR THIS REALLY SHORT REVIEW - I got this after bothering Solaris Publishing for weeks to read it early because the end of A Broken Darkness simply Murdered Me, and they approved me on the day that it archives (today). Obviously I read the entire thing in one sitting between work and class. Yes I have had it preordered since literally last September. Honestly, this is the best end of a trilogy of books that I may have ever read? I feel like I've always been disappointed by third books in trilogies, but this was incredible. I would die for Johnny And She Would Let Me. Yeah I can't wait to reread the whole series this summer. Incredible work by the incredible Premee Mohamed, once again. Who knew a little bug could write so many words?? (Five stars.) Thanks Solaris Publishing for providing this free eARC in exchange for a review, etc etc and also so I would stop bothering them.

The Void Ascendant is the third book in Premee Mohamed's "Beneath the Rising" trilogy, her Lovecraftian Horror trilogy which started by featuring seemingly bewildered everyman Nick, trying merely to help raise his family in a world prejudiced against him, and his childfriend Johnny Chambers, a white girl supergenius whose technological developments had changed the world. But the first book soon revealed that Johnny's achievements came with help from Them, lovecraftian beings who wanted to consume our world, and as the series developed, it became clear that the things Johnny was willing to do for her own greatness, and what she would risk, was far far more than Nick (and the reader) could have imagined. And so Nick found himself along for the ride for the first two books, hoping that the greater horror wasn't the Lovecraftian monsters causing millions of deaths...but Johnny herself, until an incredible ending to book 2.

It was an ending that was apparently meant to be the end of the series, but apparently Mohamed couldn't leave it there, and so we get this third book, somehow continuing the story. And while I didn't actually love book 2 - I felt the character moments were often pushed aside by technobabble (magic-babble?) that I couldn't care about - The Void Ascendant is a fascinating examination of characters of various abilities facing unstoppable (Lovecraftian) forces, and what that does to each of them: do they resist? do they collaborate? And how do they react to the discovery of those who do resist, who might not be trustworthy, and who might merely want power for themselves? There's a lot of really interesting stuff here, and while the lovecraftian stuff remains not scary at all, the character work is really really interesting and well done.

NOTE: MAJOR SPOILERS for Books 1-2 are below - I've been very vague up to this point, but I have to discuss them in particular to fully review this book. Be forewarned.


---------------------------------------------------Plot Summary-------------------------------------------------------
For Seven Years, the Prophet believed he was the last survivor from Earth after it was destroyed by the one he once thought he loved, by the one who was really the instrument of Them all along. Now he serves as a prophet on a world conquered by Them long ago, ruled by people who bow down to Them and who make him perform bloody ceremonies for the sake of "prophecy". And he rationalizes it all, as after all, fighting against Them only results in the deaths and destructions of millions and billions, while collaboration only results in the death of a lesser amount, so surely this is the right path after all, right?

But then a spy finds her way into the archive, an archive no one can possibly get into, and the Prophet is told to interrogate her....and while the spy's body is strange and unfamiliar, the voice is unmistakable - the voice of the destroyer he once thought was gone. And once more she seeks to resist Them, and promises a way of taking them down to her band of followers, a band that the Prophet once more gets caught up in. But after all he's seen that has happened as a result of resistance, can he really go along with her once more?

And even if he might secretly want to resist and risk his life once again, can the Prophet really trust her once again - she who has clearly always been Their real instrument, whose ego and desire for attention and control doomed their world and all those he once cared about?
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Okay yes, yes the story here is once again following Nick, as you would imagine, and as you might imagine, this is a man who has changed a hell of a lot from where he was in book 1, where he followed Johnny willingly and thought he loved her until he discovered she had made a magical bargain to essentially force him to be her friend. Then in book 2, after he tried to join a force to stop Johnny from more destruction, he wound up back in her orbit....until she made a last minute audible to her plan, an audible that was meant to preserve her own power, which wound up destroying the Earth and casting Nick out into other worlds and universes, lost with everyone he loved dead. So naturally, Nick is traumatized, and doesn't think fighting against Them is worth it - because after all, that resulted in the death of the entire Earth.

And when Johnny seems to reappear in a new form, he also no longer can believe that she has any good intention, or that she won't at some point betray them in favor of Them, after all - she always has. And so you have a story here of two people once again who keep orbiting around each other and now know more of each other and how they've changed than they ever could have imagined - with Johnny knowing that Nick is too afraid to act even though she needs him to help her and those forces she's convinced with her charisma to join her and Nick knowing that she will prioritize her own control and power over everything else, even if that results in taking more reckless actions that could doom everyone else...and who Nick knows will always be tempted by the promises of Them. And so even as Nick finds himself relying on her and dragged around, he constantly fears her betrayal, and keeps telling others around him that she will betray them....and tries to save the one friend he's seemed to have made in this new world.

And of course you have still a Lovecraftian story here, where the two of them, their party, a surprise returning character, and more wind up seeking out even more Elder Gods to take on the Lovecraftian horrors that have haunted the world throughout the series, in hopes of taking on one set of monsters with another. And it results in lots of magical and lovecraftian prisons and quests, and battles, and well if those things are interesting to you, they'll be interesting to you here (they're not really interesting to me on their own). But these quests, and the characters and Gods who come out of them, really add to the rest of the characters and how they each see the world, especially as they elevate Johnny's unique nature to new heights, which only threaten things more.

And so you wind up with an ending that puts all that to a head, and forces the two main characters to make incredible choices, with a collision that is just sooooo sooooo cathartic after everything else that has happened in this trilogy.....and that's not the end, for Mohamed doesn't do simple endings, and instead features just one last act, which satisfyingly wraps up the series in a way that of course still leaves uncertainty about what is right and whether the characters got what they deserved after everything else. And that's something I really appreciated, and made this one a winner, in a way I very much didn't expect after book 2.

I did not realize this was the third in a trilogy when I requested my ARC, but that did not stop me from plowing ahead anyway, and I'm glad that I did. The disorientation at the beginning of the book as I came to terms with the world helped build the mistrust that Nick feels in his position as prophet amid the rulers. It made connecting with what soon became a roller-coaster of worlds and races of people easier to ground through a distrustful and confused and impulsive character that I was primed to connect to. I am also partial to any work that suggests rather than tells its world, its monsters, its themes which makes coming to a series late more palatable and interesting; besides already wanting to read the earlier books in this series now to understand character development and rationale. It is hard, otherwise, to judge character relationships given I do not have the background, but they did feel to be the weakest part of an otherwise well-written and structured thrill.

The Void Ascendant follows Nick and his, once thought to be dead, friendly foe on their quest to try to rid the universe of it’s greatest evil, prevent an inevitable war, and hopefully retroactively save Earth from destruction.

I struggled with rating this book. I went back and forth between 2 and 3 stars as I was reading, so I’m going to say it’s a 2 1/2 star book for me. The plot was very creative and compelling, but I found a lot to be lacking when it came to world building.

The plot was your basic quest story, but it had some great twists and turns and I loved that it took place throughout the entire universe/muti-verse!

The creativity and specificity of all of the creatures and different peoples was wonderful! Even though most of these were completely crazy and fanciful they seemed so real and really jumped right off the page!

Also, I loved Nick’s character. He was so down to earth and real. He was funny and confused and betrayed and just such a well rounded character. I loved that the story was told through his voice.

During the course of the book we travel to many different worlds and I was struggling to imagine most of them, which is not something I normally have trouble doing. There also was a lot of points in the book I had to go back and reread because I didn’t understand how they got from point A to point B, which again, I rarely need to do. It sometimes felt as if big chunks of exposition were missing from the story and that caused a lot of confusion for me.

One other thing that I had a hard time with throughout the book was the relationships. Specifically the relationship between Nick and Yenu. There were so many times when Nick seemed to be flip flopping his view on her, so I was never able to really get a grasp on their relationship fully. Which may have been the author’s intention, but it made the story harder to follow throughout the book.

There also, wasn’t that much character development for a majority of the characters, which left me not really caring about them or how they played into the story.

All in all it was an enjoyable story, but it left a lot to be desired.

I received a free copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review. All thoughts and statements are my own.

Unnerving and mindblowing, this series' conclusion really sticks the landing and delivers. The Void Ascendant is a perfect mix of SFF and horror, with a narrative and a cast of characters that grips you with intrigue and emotion.