What a stunning conclusion to the Combat Codes trilogy!

Blacklight Born picks up after a small time jump following book 2. Cego is now working with his brother Silas to overthrow the Daimyo, and Murray has taken the Whelps on a Pilgrimage for combat training, with the secret mission of finding and freeing Cego from Silas's control. Will the Whelps be able to save Cego? Will the Daimyo ever be overthrow? These questions and more are answered in this action packed finale to the "Combat Codes"!

I'm happy to say that this conclusion did not disappoint. We follow Cego's journey to determine what side of the war he's on as he questions what he really wants. As with book 2, many of the chapters are from different character's points of view, so the reader gets to see what everyone is thinking at moments of high tension. I enjoyed how everything wrapped up, as well as some twists I did not see coming near the end! There is so much emotion packed into this novel-devastation, shock, friendship, along with many others. The author did a great job of keeping the characters true to themselves and I was very fond of the intense friendship between the Whelps.

A few things confused me-how easily Cego changed sides, the fact that Silas seemed a lot more evil in this novel (in the last novel I was sure he was a good guy, but all of a sudden we see a completely different side of him), and I wanted a bit more about the state of the world in the epilogue. These things ultimately led me to rating the book 4/5 stars, but still, I enjoyed the series as a whole and would highly recommend to fantasy readers.

Thank you so much to Netgalley and Orbit Books for providing an arc in exchange for an honest review.

An excellent conclusion to the Combat Codes series. If you like Sci-Fi fantasy and martial arts, this series is a must read. Blacklight born does an excellent job of wrapping everything up with some stellar plot twists, I didn't see coming, I loved it!

Really solid finale to a fantastic series. Darwin has gone from strength to strength and I'm so excited to see what he writes next.